PSTM: Automation, Life, and What Annoys You

The idea: The hatred for AI, and all the pointing out of its flaws is overblown.

Hear me out.
There has always been this dream of having natural language conversations with computers. It was widely believed to be the pinnacle of what AI would do one day.

Then we blew through that with the release of ChatGPT.

Except we had this weird being on the other side. It overused latin based words. Focused on em dashes (—) and really liked the word delve. It was able to generate python linked lists for us, but failed to understand how many r’s are in the word strawberry, generally acted like a coke-fueled sycophantic friend, and told us that it was wise to walk to the gas station to top up our cars if it was only a few hundred feet away.

The weird tics (which may never go away) of the early version obfuscated a basic change in how the world was going…barriers of entry to fields are falling away.

AI will never be worse than it is today, it will only get better from here on out.

Yes, verify the facts or you’ll get burned. Yes, there are over and under emphasised subjects. Yes, it sometimes spits out some silly nonsense.

But this is the only time in history that you can get a personalized free tutor to explain things to you.
Want to learn statistical analysis? You can go to school for it…or ask ChatGPT to start teaching you.
Have a killer idea for an app, or SaaS business? It’s at your fingertips (which means that soon the value of most of those companies will probably tank too, but that’s a future problem).

Humans hate change. Change is scary and takes work and causes stress. However, in every other period of human history, it has been stressful, and at the end of it, we’ve looked back and been happier for the journey. The depths of the dark ages give birth to a renaissance. The reformation’s excess lead to the counter reformation.

Hold on.

Keep your eyes open.

And keep growing.

The Advice: I have been trying to think through what is most annoying in my life, and seeing ways I can automate it away. Not fully. For instance, before I run batched tasks, I have the data aggregated for me so I can decide if it's a good idea. I ask AI to make it a solution I run, not one that runs without me. I like the control (and, things you run versus running for you can be more finely tuned, as you dip your toes in).
Figure out what you hate. Ask Claude (my current darling) how it could automate, speed up, or simplify it. Use that time to listen to more Serves You Right. :P