People vs Zeros and Ones
While I’m a fervent user of AI tools, for the longest time I couldn’t exactly figure out why and how AI affects software engineers negatively.
There’s something alienating about AI that I don’t think it has been discussed much. It’s that I enjoy going to the office, seeing people, having lunch with them. Talking about sports, work, the future. Talk about myself. Get to know them and their family. Their culture, roots. I’m very much a people’s person. I enjoy having slack conversations. Sharing pictures, travel tips, shared passions or pain points about life, being a software engineer. How to raise kids, keep a well maintained house. etc. Even when it’s not in person, I prefer to see people’s face online. Or at worst at least see an actual profile photo. I also enjoy asking and answering questions on stackoverflow / reddit / slack. I feel more human and worthy when people or more so if a person who’s an iOS community leader, spends the time and answers my question and cherish the moment where years later I meet these people in real life for the first time. I take photos with them, hug them. All of it.
To say this all differently, my mind interacts, perceives and appreciates the same content written by a much differently, more naturally and better than one that’s written by AI. I guess after I am still human.
My interactions with these people and more importantly the community is far bigger than just the sum of questions and answer with AI. The emoji reactions, gifs, jokes that AI never truly gets or means make the conversation less pleasant. The profile photo of the person. How that profile photo changes over time means something. A leaderboard, an online competition, a chat conversation amongst multiple people can never happen with AI.
It’s also that the placement of a conversation, when, who answered it, who commented, all gel better in our brains vs just asking AI. I memorize things a lot better if Matt Smollinger answers a question in #code-help of Philly Cocoa Heads’s Slack and then Kotaro Fujita leaves a comment, later Charles interacts with a ➕ or 💯 emoji and my colleague Ashley adds a new answer to it months later.
An AI conversation is also for the time being is private and 1:1. Nobody sees my conversations, nobody comes back to it later other than myself nor upvotes or comments the question or answers. It feels less alive than real public conversations with multiple people that span a good period of over time.
Additionally with people it’s usually a give and get. With AI it’s just always get get get. The inferior feeling to AI just makes the relationship even less natural 🙃. And if any point you give back to the AI in the manner Meta employees are currently doing, then you may feel that you’re just feeding the monster.
Of the most negative usages I’ve known of, has been having employees go through onboarding of a new team using minimal human interaction and instead relying heavily on AI to guide themselves.
Infinite vs Finite
There’s been so much happening in our world. We’re being pushed to the limits. Unlimited chaos and news. Unlimited friends. Unlimited Apps, Conversations, TV shows, Emails, Groups Ads. Unlimited breach of privacy. Unlimited areas to improve myself, workload and demand. Unlimited competition. And now unlimited (artificial) Intelligence.
Our brains are not equipped for this sheer amount. We feel over burdened. The amount of context switching that has to happen is far too much. AI has intensified the effect. When I walk into a library, coffee shop or university study area, the number one website on laptops is ChatGPT. Time will tell of its impact.
The fact that we can do more in shorter time, doesn’t necessarily make us smarter. Our brains can only learn at a certain pace. Beyond that it will overflow.
If you constantly give an 8yr old answers to their math questions, they can’t achieve mastery. Mastery requires experimentation, try & error, conversation and patience. AI turns our brains into an ocean with a depth of just 1 inch.
A different kind of AI guardrail
Not all AI guardrails should be about safety and privacy. Some should be about its emotional impact on humans and human interactions. A recent research by Harvard Kennedy School says:
They found that daily or frequent use of AI is significantly associated with greater levels of depressive symptoms. The odds of reporting moderate depression were 30% higher among people who used AI each day. The researchers found similar patterns for symptoms of anxiety and irritability. The odds of reporting at least moderate depression were 50% greater for people aged 45-65 who used AI daily.
The researchers also found that frequent AI use is that more common among certain groups, including:
- Men
- Younger adults
- People in cities
- People with higher levels of education
- People with higher incomes
Cyber Psychosis
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan said at a SXSW event that he had “cyber psychosis” and sleeps four hours a night because he wants to manage the 10 agents he has working on three different projects.
Attachment
In addition, AI chatbots and companions are increasingly configured to simulate empathy, offering users nonjudgmental responses and continual validation (Brandtzaeg, P. B., et al., Human Communication Research, Vol. 48, No. 3, 2022opens in new window). The more humanlike an AI appears in language, appearance, and behavior, the more users ascribe consciousness to it (Guingrich, R. E., & Graziano, M. S. A., Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 15, 2024).
Final Thoughts
- Acknowledge the hidden problem and lack of a silver bullet. You’re not alone in your thoughts.
- With AI, now more than ever, push for slower pace of development. Otherwise burnouts will follow.
- Schedule time with your work friends. Have social hours, book clubs, group activities, competitions that aren’t just another hackathon. Culture matters more than ever. But then leave work at 5pm and spend time on yourself, family, meditation and exercise.
- Remove noise and constant notifications and AI news checking. The good / important will find their way to you with some delay. As long as you know how to prompt, create a spec and skill, and wire things up then you’re mostly good
- Much like a parent who has lost the connection with their children, some people actually miss being asked about how to do things and how things work. More importantly they miss that human connection. We shouldn’t feel shy to ask people things. They like providing you with answers and more importantly engaging with another human.