Original Reddit post

I’ve been thinking about a question that seems increasingly important to everyone as AI makes more kinds of work cheaper: What capability does the activity produce, and what happens if we remove the activity? We tend to think of work as a means to an end. If a machine can produce the same outcome faster, the work appears unnecessary. But sometimes the activity is doing two things at once: producing an outcome, and producing the person capable of producing that outcome. A calculator can remove arithmetic without removing mathematical understanding. A flight simulator can replace some forms of practice while preserving the feedback that teaches judgment. A spellchecker can remove mechanical correction without removing the act of writing. The relevant question is not whether AI removes effort. It is which effort we remove. Some effort is merely a cost. Removing it creates leverage. Other effort is part of the process through which a capability develops, and removing it can change the person who emerges from the process. Writing doesn’t just produce a document. It forces you to discover what you think. Building doesn’t just produce a product. It teaches you what the plan left out. Running an experiment doesn’t just produce a result. It teaches you how your assumptions behave when they encounter reality. Making a decision doesn’t just produce an outcome. It gives you the experience from which judgment develops. AI can accelerate all of these processes. But it can also bypass them. You can get the argument without learning how to construct one. You can get the strategy without understanding the problem. You can get the code without learning the system. You can get the answer without spending enough time with the question to discover what you actually wanted to know. The output may be better. The person may not. This doesn’t mean difficulty is inherently valuable. Much of what we do is unnecessary friction, and removing it is exactly what technology is supposed to do. The harder question is whether the friction was merely slowing us down, or whether it was teaching us something. If we optimize away the process through which a capability develops, we shouldn’t be surprised when the capability eventually becomes scarce. Don’t optimize away a process until you understand what capability that process was producing. submitted by /u/Elegant-Astronaut636

Originally posted by u/Elegant-Astronaut636 on r/ArtificialInteligence