Writing Is the Good Kind of Work
Not all work is created equal
Later today, I will pull up an app on my phone and push a little button. The button will make a robot clean my floors for me.
I’m happy to let my Roomba do the vacuuming. I don’t think I’m missing out if I don’t haul a vacuum cleaner around my house for half an hour, pushing it back and forth. I don’t want to do that work, and I’m glad I don’t have to. Nor do I think I’m really losing much when I load my dishwasher and push a button rather than hunch over the kitchen sink and scrub plates for 20 minutes after dinner. I’m not about to surrender a number of other modern conveniences like my washing machine or my electric lawnmower so that I can do more work.
So why am I bothered by the fact that AI can now do the work of writing or making art for people?
Remember the scene from The Matrix where Neo learns kung fu?
Neo’s compatriots plug him into their computer, pull up the kung fu program, and, voila, 10 seconds later he knows kung fu.
This scene is meant to be impressive, but it has always bothered me. Maybe my reaction is simple self-preservation. I’m an educator, and I’d become irrelevant pretty quickly if people could, in seconds, just download what I teach them over the course of a year. But I think it’s more…
