We’re all so excited about the newest capabilities of each released AI model that we’re forgetting the consequences of having access to such an amazing tool, and the possibility of being able to do so much so fast.
I know people who go to the gym and still have their phones connected so they can keep sending prompts to their laptops. I’m guilty myself of opening ChatGPT with audio mode in my car while I’m driving alone to chat about projects.
So it’s not only that we’re constantly switching context when working, since we can work on multiple things in parallel, it’s also that we don’t know how to stop because the tokens are there for you to use.
Nowadays I’m finishing my workdays with a level of mental exhaustion I don’t remember since the final exams at my university, but I have it every day instead. I’m not sure when/if this will ever change, but I think we need to bring back some calm into our lives.
Where does this come from? Is it a sense of urgency or scarcity that we might not have the access we have nowadays in the near future, so we need to build as much as we can now? Is it a feeling of scarcity that it’s never going to be enough to be first / better / win over competitors? Where does it end?
Self-analyzing myself, it feels like when you discovered there was a cheat code to have infinite money in your favorite game, and you start buying or building things like crazy because the constraint you’ve suffered for so long is now gone.
That might be the key: the constraint on building software is, with some caveats, gone in many ways, so we don’t know how to regulate ourselves.
I’m optimistic that more people will realize the toll this is taking on our lives, and that even if we can build software all the time at a speed and quality probably never seen before, it doesn’t mean we should, and that we can do other things too.
I know it’s fun, but we need to find out how much is “enough” for each day. The tokens might be available, but our lives won’t always be.
Until next time.