Hey, some sane “anti-AI” stuff on the internet!

I use the example of a carpenter

I go to work and I build chairs. It takes me all day to build one chair. I carry shit, I cut shit, I sand shit, I paint shit, I hammer and nail shit, etc… at the end of the day I’m hot, I’m dirty, I’m tired, and somewhere along the way I hurt myself a little bit so I got some minor scrapes and bruises

But I sit back, look at my chair, and I’m proud. That’s what I do. I make chairs.

It’s not glamourous, but that is what I do. I am a carpenter. Not just by profession, but by choice. This is what I wanted to do. It’s what I became. I’m a father, and I’m a soccer fan, but also, I’m a carpenter

Then along comes a robot that can build a chair all by itself. This is great! Just because the robot can build a chair all by itself doesn’t mean it has to. What it does mean is that it can help me build a chair. If I need help carrying the wood, it can carry the wood. If I don’t want to sand, I can tell it to sand. It’s not a “wood carrying robot” or a “sanding robot”, it’s a “Chair building robot” and now I can ask it to help me with any step along the way

But then my boss finds out about this chair building robot. Suddenly he doesn’t want me to build the chair at all anymore, he just wants me to tell the robot to do it

This is sad. I’m no longer a carpenter. I’ve lost the meaning in my job.

I go to work, I tell a robot to build a chair, I just sit back and correct any mistakes it makes.

But hey, if the robot can build a chair in 30 minutes, and I’m only responsible for one chair a day, I guess the good news is that I get to keep my job, I make the same amount of money, but now I only have to work for about an hour a day. Clock in, tell the robot to build a chair, watch it for 30 minutes, fix it’s mistakes, clock out. Same money for an hours worth of work

Nope

I’m now responsible for 9 chairs a day

9 chairs! We’ll I’ll get 9 times the pay right?

Nope

So I keep my job, I make the same amount of money, I work the same amount of hours, but also my job gives me zero satisfaction in life and now I’m responsible for 9 times the amount of work. Also, I’m no longer a carpenter

Again, that’s what I wanted to be. I went to school for it. When I was younger and they asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up”, I said, “a carpenter”. I was a carpenter. I was happy. My boss took that from me. He didn’t fire me, he just took away the position of “carpenter”.

How is this a good thing?

OK, well, I’m an optimist. Times change I guess, you can’t be a guy that makes cannon balls forever. Lets see what the future hold. I go to work, I tell the robot to build the chair and now I got nothing to do for 30 minutes. Neither do my coworkers. So we bring in some TVs, we set up some chairs, we play Mario Kart and watch soccer matches while the robot builds the chair. Every 30 minutes I have to get up, inspect a chair, and tell the robot to build it again, and then it’s back to Mario Kart

At least my job is much more enjoyable in that sense I guess. I laugh at a lot more at work

Then my boss comes in and sees us all standing around laughing, playing video games, and watching TV. He’s sees us happy

He’s big mad

But why? We’re each producing 9 times the amount of chairs in the same amount of time for the same amount of money using the robot he wanted us to use. How is he not happy about that? He’s getting more chairs in the same amount of time without having to pay anyone any extra money.

He’s big mad

The next day I come to work and there’s a big console with 200 buttons on it. Each button tells one of 200 robots to build a chair. It takes me 30 minutes to push all 200 buttons. By the time I’ve pushed the last button, it’s time to push the first button again

Now I go to work, I work the same hours, I make the same pay, I make 3,200 chairs a day, I have zero job satisfaction, I have zero fun, I’m not a carpenter

Then my boss has the nerve to get on Social Media and post: “Chair building robots are great. Imagine life without them, how awful!”

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AI is a great tool for doing all the boring shit you don’t want to do. It’s great for automated process, basic code reviews, pipeline management, etc… I’m glad it can help me write a complex query or figure out what the hell this error message means and what in my code might be causing it.

I’m glad it can help me do new things… I don’t want to be a game developer but making a game sounds fun. It’s a different kind of challenge and it’s nice Claude Code can step in and basically hand-hold me through my controllers and such. It’s a great teacher

What I don’t want is to be forced to use it to do my entire job… I don’t want to product code by only prompting claude

I like writing code. I like knowing the code I pushed is beautiful. Clean, well organized, good folder structures, etc… I like people opening up my projects and going, “damn, this is nice”.

I do not like that people assume Claude did it

I don’t hate AI, but we need to get past this initial phase of upper management not knowing how to properly use it and thinking it’s a magic tool that can do everything for us, instead of a fantastic assistant that we should use at our own descension

That being said, AI is not going away. It’s not just a dumb toy for making bad music and shitty TikTok reels. It’s incredibly helpful and it’s here to stay. In that sense, Anti-AI shit is as embarrassing as this over-the-top pro AI shit.

Yeah it’s like that recent adage isn’t it: I want AI to automate all my drudgery so I can spend more time being creative, but Silicon Valley is automating all my creativity so I can spend more time doing drudgery.