If AI is special, unlike any other tool, why aren't you using it that much?

I personally don't think it's anything special, and if I knew I'll die soon and were planning my last trip with my child, I'd use AI, just like I'd use a credit card, or my phone.

It allows me to spend more time with other people, getting boring tasks done much quicker.

I don't think it began with AI. We repeatedly catch the car we're very deeply programmed to chase. We want to minimize discomfort, risk, suffering, adversity. We want to maximize safety and comfort. We want all of our kids to make it to adulthood. We want to disinfect the planet of all diseases. We want our bodies to survive a career. We want our families to survive every winter. Those goals are all completely sensible.

But parents, for example, have been here before and recognize that optimizing these sensible goals have a consequence of missing the richness in the journies we no-longer need to take. So have those who have grappled with social media addiction or the withering effect of sedentary careers, or even the little things like waiting at the radio for your favourite song, your finger hovering eagerly over the record button of your cassette player.

I think this is going to be the supreme challenge. We're wired to seek the destination of comfort, but we lose the journey to reach it. It was easier when we had no choice. But we're doing a great job optimizing the soul out of being human.

In that movie only the protagonist had the magic remote to fast-forward through existence. It was a tragedy of self-destruction.

But what if everyone gets the remote at roughly the same time?

For my first dev job, I was made to set up a sole proprietorship just so the company could illegally dodge minimum wage and severance. I didn't get mentored; I learned through constant abuse. It was only when I first used AI that I realized the people around me were teaching me garbage and my books were completely obsolete.

I envy that this person was surrounded by people who cared. Before AI, trying to learn programming just meant dealing with insults. They can stay in touch with their network because they were respected. I had zero people in my environment for intellectual discussions or programming.

It really shows how your environment shapes your relationship with tools. I have a love-hate dynamic with AI. It frustrates me that my manual coding skills are degrading, but I'm incredibly thankful for the easy access to knowledge I never had. At the end of the day, reading this just makes me envy those who get to live and work in a warm, respectful setting.