We can write glorious, in-depth, well-reasoned essays about any topic at the click of a virtual button. But, should we do it? It depends on the goal and how it benefits us, with a focus on us, humans. Humans run the world, not machines. And as such, humans must build the competency to run it.
Plan & purpose becomes more important
As toilsome tasks get done easily, and we don't get tangled in the specifics of tasks, goals and objectives become more and more important. Let's say we have automated 100% of tasks that we used to do. What do we do in life? People who took work as an everyday goal and by extension life's goal are going to find it hard to stomach. We routinely get a glimpse of what it means by observing people who just retired. Many feel purposeless, lose interest in life and develop health complications.
Atrophy is the general result of automation
Any action has two aspects: the goal, and the method of accomplishing it. For example taking water from the well requires walking to the well, and taking out the water. Now with taps, we do have water but we don't walk to get it or use our hands to take out the water and carry it. We use our muscles less and they weaken. They atrophy. We accomplished the goal but changed the way we accomplished it and the results on ourselves changed as a result.
Similarly, with the arrival of the printing press, books became more and more available. People memorised books less and less as they are available whenever they needed to reference something. With the internet and computers, we sometimes don't even bother remembering difficult words as we know we can look them up again effortlessly. We record lectures in the hope of listening to them again and snap blackboard / slides pictures to keep a copy of important points. We rely less and less on memory which becomes duller over time.
By using GPS for navigation, we no longer remember maps. Without GPS, we pay close attention to landmarks along the road. Houses with particular colors and general route familiarity. Then we deconstructed the route into sequences and remembered them. Then we build and reinforce the general map over time and link it to other places. We update our global memory with this specific route and try to assess better ways to reach there or if one road is blocked we try to get an idea of what route might work. With the GPS, it's as good as you did not see anything on the road. You remember only gettting into the car and coming out. Our navigation skills are impacted considerably.
Solving tasks becomes arduous
With the continued use of technology, we observe two worrying trends: the decline of creativity and shorter attention spans. Both are stock ingredients for solving problems and working on tasks. Creativity is associated with the new. New ideas, methods and expressions. Creativity can also be developed. It helps create wow solutions to problems and repharse thinking.
Shorter attention spans bring in a lack of focus. Spending time to focus on a task feels like torture. Short-form content and feeds train the brain to expect high rewards and constant novelty. This moves the baseline expectation for stimulation. Reading long text, waiting, sitting down doing nothing and the very act of thinking feels like a drudgery. There is a concern that this will be the new normal.
Effort is indispensible to human development
Dumbing our survival skills and our ability to raise strong children creates a weak society that invites upon itself misery. We should always keep human development as a top priority. And this requires effort. We go to the gym. We don't say "oh we have forklifts, i don't need to go to the gym". Similarly we recognise the need to walk even if we have a car. And the need for human to human interactions even if we have phones.
Automation and ease is not a replacement for the human. Skillful humans use automation better. And just because we can use automations easily does not mean we have to. We have to be judicious.
Language is king
What is a book? A book is reality encoded in letter format. The words vary from one language to another. But, they translate human experiences for other humans. Humans reading books understand what other humans want to convey. When the word 'sea' is written, we evoke the picture of the sea in our minds. A boat sailing, riding the waves and we picture this in our minds. We also encode thoughts and feelings and respond to them when reading. This creates empathy among others.
Currently, LLMs understand the world around them by the bias of language. And we prompt them using language. As the context window of LLMs grows, we'd be able to throw books at them for solving tasks. And mastering this medium of communication is a great asset going forward.
Reading is an antidote for mindless scrolling. It improves focus and expands one's mental landscape. Writing is an exercise in tidying thoughts and improving clarity. It impacts communication and pursuasion tremendously. It restores critical thinking, the ones that we lose when chatting with LLMs.
Coding is a craft
By learning to code, it includes understanding computing. You cannot code efficiently if you do not understand your domain of application as the code will perform poorly, or not at all. Computers are around us, everywhere. The majority of us own a phone. Transportation schedules and companies use computers. And you are probably reading this on a computer as well.
Learning to code is a great way to understand computers deeply. This allows us to understand the ramifications that the digital has on our lives and species. It also structures our thoughts and help us deconstruct concepts. We should know computing deeply and coding well to be able to automate coding using computers. Computers should write code that you have in mind. It's not about reviewing code that a probabilistic generator wrote. Rather, it is about making the generator generate what you want and you review whether it got it right. Else, it will be the engine dragging your software in an unknown path all while you keep 100% accountability. Not a nice bet. If your skills are sub-par, upgrade yourselves, bridge your gaps then let the LLM code.
Parting words
The product of mindless, effortless automation is tagged for direct transfer to the bin. Nobody wants to read slop. Why is it so? Because human value human. We should honour human works and human-vetted works. We should know how to write and plan and code as if LLMs don't exist. Only then can we efficiently automate. Automate quality and you get quality. Automate the mediocre, and the mediocre you get.