A Little Less Reliance

Coming out of an enablement session, I found myself reminded of normal human behavior - that is, people will try to get out of doing work, if they don't want to do it, even if it is in their best interest to do so. Of course, by the end of the session, they realized that doing it actually wasn't that much of a punishment to their life and if it works, they will be better off and less reliant.

It is that last part that interests me in this case, as while many people are trying to find ways to lessen their load, I tend to find ways to increase mine. This doesn't mean I don't take anything off my plate of course, but if it is something that has the potential to add to my value, I would rather rely on myself than others, as ultimately - I am the one responsible for my experience and will be the one to live with my outcomes, even if it is at the hands of another.

The people I work with are highly experienced and skilled, so I am lucky, and I also understand why they don't want to do certain tasks. But, I see it as more of a general move away from taking control of the situation and leaving it up to others, or tools of various kinds. We have talked about AI a lot, but there are other things that take away our cognitive load, but might leave us worse off for it.

For example, no one need remember where they are going anymore, since there is always a navigator available and, they don't even have to learn how to read a map, because it will speak out the words. This might get us to where we are going with far more ease, but it also represents how our brains work, where unless we put load on them, we aren't actually going to remember much, let alone build the various problem solving skills we might need to apply in other areas.

There are a thousand ways to automate processes, but if the decision is made on how well we are able to interact with each other, many are failing. Like one of my colleagues said today abbout a process I introduced to them,

"There are different skills needed at each stage"

Yes. But does that mean that a person isn't able to learn them? If they automate a stage ofr have someone else do it for them, it means that they miss the opportunity to learn and, the outcome isn't just a missed skill, it can also be the strengthening of learning in general, making the next thing to learn even harder, influencing them to again find a tool or someone more skilled.

At what point is a person wholly irrelevant?

Like it or not, relevancy comes down to what a person is able to offer others, and a lot of people seem to be choosing to make themselves quite useless. A parent's job (in my opinion) is to make themselves irrelevant to their children, but it isn't through a process of deskilling so that there is nothing to offer a child, it is a development of the child in order to no longer need to rely on the parent.

We seem to be going in the opposite direction in terms of tradeable skills, even though people are learning more skills probably in general. For example, learning how to play the piano as an adult might be fun, but it isn't likely to build to a level where it is tradeable in the sense that someone will pay to hear a recital. It doesn't mean it doesn't have value, but it can mean it doesn't have earning potential.

It isn't all about money of course, but I do think that we are spending far too long on entertaining ourselves, and far too little time on developing our value-adding skills that can keep us relevant in the workplace. AI is going to replace us all one day, but the people who can do the least in codifiable areas, are likely the first to go, because those "easy" tasks are going to be the first ones coded.

For example, anyone can write like ChatGPT, they just need to spend the time learning the grammar and trawling the internet for freely-available sources. All ChatGPT does, is take the process out of it, giving a result without the work. But, that result isn't the result of a highly skilled and experienced expert, it is that of someone who is doing a high school book report. Someone who is irrelevant in the employment market with the skills they have at that time.

However, what they should be doing at school is building the framework and processes required to build more expertise as they gain experience, with a large part of that coming from trial and error and pains from taking the journey. Skip those steps and a student can get a good outcome for the level required at high school, but that same approach will fail in a professional market place.

No one likes to fail.

Which is probably why so many people like using AI-generated content, because it makes them feel like a professional. But, in so doing, they are failing to build the skills necessary to be an expert themselves. They will be valueless, because they won't have deep enough experience and likely, not the right skills to bring value to an organization, or a community.

Similarly to the fact that we can't learn to surf from a book alone, we also can't learn to learn by using AI to do all the learning for us. We have to get our minds dirty, and I don't mean by consuming more porn, we do enough of that already.

But, it is normal human behavior to avoid work, which is why we are such good tool builders. In the past however, the tool stack was so limited and there were so many tasks to do, that we could always find more work for ourselves. However now, we are moving closer to a point where a person can survive without working at all, adding no value. At some point, this turns into a regression of productivity and, an inability to build better tools.

So, we become even more reliant on what is around us, because we are mentally and perhaps physically, unable to get ourselves off the proverbial (and maybe literal) couch to look after ourselves. We need a solution for everything, but we have no way to solve our own problems.

My daughter asked me the other day, why it was that when there are arguments between kids at school, so many kids run to a teacher to sort it out, rather than working it out amongst themselves.

In your opinion, what is a good answer?

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]