I am working more than ever. As a software engineer using AI, I can attempt more things than ever before, and I am. I’m seeing ambitious coworkers who are doing the same — maybe to an unsustainable degree.
This may be surprising. Isn’t AI the ultimate automation tool and expected to eliminate jobs?
The language of finite and infinite games is helpful here. Finite games, like a soccer match, are played to win and then end; infinite games, like a business or a marriage, are played to keep the game going. There is no end to an infinite game.
If work is a finite game, then humans will find themselves with increasingly little to do, as AI rapidly takes over tasks.
But work and life are infinite games. More powerful AI tools will allow us to be more ambitious.1 Yes, our work will change, but new jobs will come.
So there are two calls to action:
- Learn to get leverage from AI. It takes practice.
- Develop healthy patterns of rest to recharge from your work. Work won’t be stopping anytime soon.2
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See Felix Rieseberg’s tutorial on how to be more ambitious using models. ↩
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Steve Yegge’s The AI Vampire discusses this at length. ↩