AI Takes Effort

Garbage in, garbage out.

When I talk with friends and colleagues about generative AI, they tend to fall into four camps:

1. Most people I know don't use it, feeling uncomfortable or even afraid of it.

2. A few have tried it, but they’re not very comfortable with it.

3. Some use it regularly, but when pressed, they aren’t sure how it works and often take everything it produces at face value.

4. On occasion, I find someone who's a strong user, putting in the effort to apply the principle of "trust, but verify".

Personally, I have found using generative AI takes patience, and it requires me to think out what I am asking it to do. I often find myself "training" the AI in way, teaching it my own parameters and contexts, so that it gives me better results. In many ways it's like having an personal assistant that, although full of enthusiasm and great at research, comes up short on human sensibilities.

Does using AI make you dumber?

I might just as well ask if using an employee to help you do your work makes you dumber. YES, of course, it does — if you don't do your part to get the work done!

I personally know career executives who in their generation relied too heavily on their charisma to lead, while letting others do their thinking for them. In retirement, they're functionally disabled, unless they can pay for nurses to tell them what to do, and dementia is quick to set in. I can see how someone who relies on AI to do all the thinking and doesn't supervise it as they should could end up the same way.

On the other hand, if you use AI correctly, planning and thinking out what you want them to do and verifying what they give you, it's like being a good boss. You do your part of the work and act as a team with your employees. These are the people who don't fade in retirement. They stay sharp and productive well into old age. That's what I'm gunning for!

Using generative AI takes logic. It takes planning. It takes effort. And if you skip any one of these, you'll get inferior results from the AI, and possibly cost yourself some brain power over the long run.

~Tom/*