AI Does Not Create Agency
AI can create an article, publish a website and output a fully functional code - but none of this matters without human with a drive.
You still need to do and more importantly finish things.
A common opinion is the days of software development is over because anybody can just vibe code your product. But will they?
People want to eat healthier, get a handle on finances, exercise and lose weight and yet by February most New Year resolutions are broken. It’s easy to have intention. It’s much harder to stick to them.
“I am going to” syndrome is so common because it’s easy to plan and hard to commit.
Committing requires effort and effort causes discomfort. Things quite often do not turn out how you would expect. Everything is more difficult, complicated, interconnected. Effort forces unpleasant discoveries about yourself and the world and changing anything feels risky.
Speedrunning through a process of “doing” does not protect from discomfort and is not a shortcut to “done” or “staying done” - as anybody who ever delivered software product can attest.
The reason using AI feels productive is because we tied being busy to human value and artifacts of busyness to proof of productivity. Creating documents that nobody will ever read feel like accomplishments - based on the old outdated scale.
We are not using AI correctly and the definition of value and skill are going to change dramatically.
AI removes old markers of value
Pre-AI, writing and publishing a book was an undisputed accomplishment. Even if book did not earn any awards, it showed that you are capable of following through your decision to write it, committing to sitting down for hours every day and typing a cohesive thoughts that you have enough of to fill a manuscript. It showed that you are persistent and can deal with rejections and get up and do it again next day.
A book is a visible proof of skill, character and drive. Humans value things that are difficult to achieve.
If a genie brought out a black box that anybody can open as many times as they want to produce a complete book, publishing will immediately lose all meaning as a character marker.
While prompting AI to come up with a plot does take a bit more effort, the comparison still stands.
In the world of genies and boxes it’s completely irrelevant what method of production you personally had selected. The value of the output is dropping regardless if it took you one day or one year to accomplish.
How much would you pay for hand sewn shirt?
Working few hours a day, I can make a perfectly tailored shirt in one week using sewing machine.
Sewing a garment completely by hand would take weeks. The hand sewn seam is softer and lays better, the corners are less bulky.
But nobody really cares.
Buying a hand made anything - furniture, clothing, pottery - is a status symbol for the buyer rather then indication of the utility value.
A 30$ hand thrown mug may “feel” different but at the end of the day it serves tea just as well as $4.99 mug from Target.
What skills matter now?
Output devalue does not reduce the joy of craftsmanship - and there are markets that will reward a woodworker capable of producing dove joins entirely by hand.
But that market is small.
Craftsmanship becomes a skill important to the maker in order to develop taste, mastery of domain, individual voice, a competitive edge.
It less important to the market.
It’s less important than human agency.
It requires looking inwards and developing new skills:
- Solving problems well and facing the certainty of problems with the confidence that you will figure them out.
- Making quick decisions especially when data is too abundant.
- Never saying “I am going to” but silently doing.
- Sticking with things long enough to see how they develop.
- Not taking failure as the end of the road but a test that provides valuable data to adjust variables and try again.
- Not asking permission and not waiting for approval, including your own.
The barrier to doing has never been lower and doing has never been harder. AI, just like industrial revolution before, had lowered the floor, but significantly raised the ceiling, requiring a strong human agency to reach.