Facing the AI Era, My Feelings Are Always Mixed

Facing the AI era, my feelings are always mixed.

The fascinating side is that there’s forever an endless supply of new knowledge before me, so much that one person’s time simply can’t hold such a vast volume of information; but the exasperating side is that AI also often leads us on detours—it’ll pretend to understand what it doesn’t, produce hallucinations, and even fail to grasp certain specific operations and meanings with any precision.

A Whole Day, Four-Fifths of It Spent on Trial and Error

Today I spent a great deal of time feeling my way through a new tool, in order to retire an old method I’d grown accustomed to over the past twenty years but that no longer meets today’s needs. It was a transition I had no choice but to face.

Looking back over the whole day, roughly four-fifths of the time went into trial and error and groping around, and only the crucial one-fifth was the part that actually produced results. Although I hit my target smoothly in the end and did save considerable time for the future, I couldn’t shake the feeling that those four-fifths of effort had been spent somewhat in vain.

If Only We Could Save the Cost of the Detours

I can’t help thinking: if we could save all these detour costs and pour them entirely into productivity, then the knowledge we could absorb would surely grow several times over.

Perhaps this is simply the limitation of AI at this stage. It’s already powerful enough that you can’t do without it, yet not yet mature enough for you to trust it completely. But looked at from another angle, this “not quite there yet” state also makes one all the more eager for its future evolution and maturity.

Contradictions aside, the road still has to be walked forward.