Thoughts on thinking

I've been finding a lot of fulfillment in using AI to assist with things that are (for now) outside of the scope of one-shot AI. For example, when working on projects that require physical assembly or hands-on work, AI feels more like a superpower than a crutch, and it enables me to tackle projects that I wouldn't have touched otherwise. In my case, this was applied to physical building, electronics, and multimedia projects that rely on simple code that are outside of my domain of expertise.

The core takeaway for me is that if you have the desire to stretch your scope as wide as possible, you can get things done in a fun way with reduced friction, and still feel like your physical being is what made the project happen. Often this means doing something that is either multidisciplinary or outside of the scope of just being behind a computer screen, which isn't everyone's desire and that's okay, too.

Yeah I haven't found the right language for this yet, but it's something like: I'm happy and optimistic about LLMs when I'm the one doing something, and more anxious about them when I'm supporting someone else in doing something. Or: It makes me more excited to focus on ends, and less excited to focus on means.

Like, in the recent past, someone who wanted to achieve some goal with software would either need to learn a bunch of stuff about software development, or would need to hire someone like me to bring their idea to life. But now, they can get a lot further on their own, with the support of these new tools.

I think that's good, but it's also nerve-wracking from an employment perspective. But my ultimate conclusion is that I want to work closer to the ends rather than the means.

Interesting, I just replied to this post recommending the exact opposite: to focus on means vs ends.

The post laments how everything is useless when any conceivable "end state" a human can do will be inferior to what LLMs can do.

So an honest attention toward the means of how something comes about—the process of the thinking vs the polished great thought—is what life is made of.

Another comment talks about hand-made bread. People do it and enjoy it even though "making bread is a solved problem".

I saw that and thought it was an interesting dichotomy.

I think a way to square the circle is to recognize that people have different goals at different times. As a person with a family who is not independently wealthy, I care a lot about being economically productive. But I also separately care about the joy of creation.

If my goal in making a loaf of bread is economic productivity, I will be happy if I have a robot available that helps me do that quickly. But if my goal is to find joy in the act of creation, I will not use that robot because it would not achieve that goal.

I do still find joy in the act of creating software, but that was already dwindling long before chatgpt launched, and mostly what I'm doing with computers is with the goal of economic productivity.

But yeah I'll probably still create software just for the joy of it from time to time in the future, and I'm unlikely to use AIs for those projects!

But at work, I'm gonna be directing my efforts toward taking advantage of the tools available to create useful things efficiently.