I’ve given a lot of thought to generative AI and how people are interacting with it. I read the posts on Reddit, see the progression of news on social media, and even watch the development of AI use at work.
Generative AI has become commonplace at work. People use it for writing, coding, marketing, and more. I’ve seen the move from lightweight auto-complete to heavyweight work offloading. I believe there is a truth we can seek that lives somewhere between rejection of AI and the perceived inevitability of elimination and succumbing to AI as a replacement for thinking and doing.
Ford Motors had a revelation in a particularly costly fashion. They adopted AI and laid off hundreds of knowledge workers, believing that generative AI could replace the work being done by humans. Quality dropped. Industry knowledge was lost to a black hole. In the end they had to return to those very same workers they eliminated, hat in hand, and ask them to return to work.
I have come to a philosophy that I hold dear and true, which I think will stand the test of time. It is the philosophy of continuing to embrace that which is human in each of us and how AI can become a tool, augmenting work without AI becoming a replacement for human workers. My philosophy can be summed up in three short lines:
- Agency not dependence
- Collaboration not delegation
- Augmentation not replacement
We should optimize for human thinking, not for human absence.