Great post, Sharique! Your insights on AI-driven delegation are spot-on, but it got me thinking about two potential tensions:
The Role of Creativity in an AI-Delegated World: If AI handles most tasks, could we lose the creative insights that come from deep engagement with the work? For example, might a scientist miss a breakthrough by delegating data analysis to AI and overlooking an anomaly?
The Paradox of Delegation: More Time, More Work?: While AI delegation frees up time, will we just fill it with more work, leading to a new form of burnout ("work gluttony")? How do we ensure this time fuels creativity or rest instead of more obligations?
Curious to hear your thoughts on balancing these risks while harnessing AI’s potential.
Great questions!! I'm confident that we'll adapt. We did it when factories were mechanized. I think with respect to creativity. I think we will still have an important role -- interacting with the world and figuring out what problems are actually worth solving. The second, I agree, I worry that we might be on a treadmill of more work.
I'm eager to see the discovery or emergence of new forms or modalities of creative input and influence on the execution of complex tasks. That "Paradox of Delegation" resonates considerably with a growing concern I have had as well. I would like to see massive capacity increases translate into more time for human life to be genuinely enriched—and I don't mean just gains in idle time. Suppose we can increase productivity by a factor of 10. Can we spend at least three times more time with our family or dedicate more time to exploring other aspects of appreciating, creating, or contributing? It sounds like softie stuff to some, no doubt, but I hope the discourse includes these kinds of questions amid all of the frantic discussions of what people had better do to avoid being rendered useless.
For (1) I do see that we will begin to see new modalities of creativity. I just taught my first session on people analytics yesterday. In the class we have 75 people and within a matter of 25 minutes, 75 people created 75 Apps and launched them using generative AI. Even within those 25 minutes, there was MASSIVE variation in how students used the technology and how they designed the prompts and varied the app. And this variation came from their minds and their particular, unique, and creative views on the world. It was nothing less then inspiring. I think creativity is ideas x implementation and we've just given people a massive new kit for creative stuff. The only thing that limits them now is their ideas.
For (2) That is a more complex thing for me to square. Primarily because as technology expands/improves, so do expectations. I imagine that having a dishwasher or laundry machine made us demand cleaner clothes. Perhaps our quality / output bar increases, but human effort endogenously stays the same over the long term.
Great post, Sharique! Your insights on AI-driven delegation are spot-on, but it got me thinking about two potential tensions:
The Role of Creativity in an AI-Delegated World: If AI handles most tasks, could we lose the creative insights that come from deep engagement with the work? For example, might a scientist miss a breakthrough by delegating data analysis to AI and overlooking an anomaly?
The Paradox of Delegation: More Time, More Work?: While AI delegation frees up time, will we just fill it with more work, leading to a new form of burnout ("work gluttony")? How do we ensure this time fuels creativity or rest instead of more obligations?
Curious to hear your thoughts on balancing these risks while harnessing AI’s potential.
Great questions!! I'm confident that we'll adapt. We did it when factories were mechanized. I think with respect to creativity. I think we will still have an important role -- interacting with the world and figuring out what problems are actually worth solving. The second, I agree, I worry that we might be on a treadmill of more work.
I'm eager to see the discovery or emergence of new forms or modalities of creative input and influence on the execution of complex tasks. That "Paradox of Delegation" resonates considerably with a growing concern I have had as well. I would like to see massive capacity increases translate into more time for human life to be genuinely enriched—and I don't mean just gains in idle time. Suppose we can increase productivity by a factor of 10. Can we spend at least three times more time with our family or dedicate more time to exploring other aspects of appreciating, creating, or contributing? It sounds like softie stuff to some, no doubt, but I hope the discourse includes these kinds of questions amid all of the frantic discussions of what people had better do to avoid being rendered useless.
For (1) I do see that we will begin to see new modalities of creativity. I just taught my first session on people analytics yesterday. In the class we have 75 people and within a matter of 25 minutes, 75 people created 75 Apps and launched them using generative AI. Even within those 25 minutes, there was MASSIVE variation in how students used the technology and how they designed the prompts and varied the app. And this variation came from their minds and their particular, unique, and creative views on the world. It was nothing less then inspiring. I think creativity is ideas x implementation and we've just given people a massive new kit for creative stuff. The only thing that limits them now is their ideas.
For (2) That is a more complex thing for me to square. Primarily because as technology expands/improves, so do expectations. I imagine that having a dishwasher or laundry machine made us demand cleaner clothes. Perhaps our quality / output bar increases, but human effort endogenously stays the same over the long term.