Are you like me? Are you down in the mines of attempting to get to grips with generative AI before being swept away. Do you feel the pressure to learn while also knowing that it could all change tomorrow? Isn’t it something. Isn’t it exciting and exhausting.
But today I’ve noticed a slight change. Maybe I’m just too tired, and it has been a frustrating day. Maybe I need a break. I do need a break. It’s the frustration of not being able to do all the things I’d like to do. And it’s partly created by an illusion I’ve created for myself surrounding generative AI.
I have no illusions about getting rich quick with anything I do with the technology. I’m not really a tech person, so can’t fall in with the crowd really developing the exciting magic-like tools. However, I’ve had hopes that it could increase my productivity while also improving the quality of what I do.
I think it has. But this has come with a price. It’s never enough. No matter what I do, I feel like I’m falling behind in all the things I want to do. And I have no idea how to step back. I also think I don’t want to. And it’s gratingly frustrating.
It made me think today that I was seeing the outlines of a future. It wasn’t like those films of the 1950s and 1960s, where robots would be doing all the toil in the home. Though some predict that almost 40% of domestic tasks will be able to be automated in around ten years. So maybe that dream is still alive.
But my feeling was that even if I don’t have to do the cleaning and dishwashing anymore, I still won’t have more time. Even if I don’t write or edit most of the articles I put out or help to put out, there still won’t be more time. Only less. I’ll be pulled along for the ride with the frenetic pace of developments in one way or another as forms of AI and whatever comes next dominates the digital world that already dominates much of my life. I’ll be drawn out in a thousand directions as I want to do everything in the now as the pace of development is so steep in every direction. It’s more work, more content and more change, all the time, for everyone and everywhere.
So does it simply make sense to get off the ride? I don’t think so. But maybe I need to stop running around the carrousel before I end up falling off. I need to accept that it’s too much and that’s okay. Because that the way it is. And this feeling isn’t even really something new.
