If You're Not Doing This Then You're Being Left Behind

No Fate But What We Make, or, what I've learned in the past month about AI.

You've seen the headlines.

AI is the FUTURE!!
AI is THEFT!!!
AI uses too much energy!!!!

I've said similar things too.

But get this: AI is here, and it's not going away.

I've already started calling AI “the Napster of my kids' generation.” It's challenging our understanding of Intellectual Property.¹ It's causing a revolution in the way we interact with the world.

How we work.
How we consume.
How we research.

You can keep your head in the sand if you like, but I'm not going to be left behind because of my own stubbornness.

And if you don't like AI art? Cool, neither do I.

Now stop focusing on the shiny distraction and start learning what AI can do for you.

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

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I knew I needed to learn AI before it was too late.

What I learned has changed the way I work.

Listen, I'm a smart guy. I grew up pulling old computers apart and listening to dial-up at a LUDICROUS SPEED of 14.4k. I made ugly websites in the 90s. I took a programming class in High School.

And none of that seemed to matter anymore.

My mother warned me this day would come.

She has said for years, "one day you'll wake up and realize technology has just outpaced your understanding of it, and you'll keep feeling further and further behind."

I didn't expect to face that feeling before the age of 40.

I'm definitely to blame.

I stopped keeping up to date on these skills.

Programming online has evolved so fast that I never knew what language or process to learn next.

It was the Paradox of Choice in action: faced with too many options, I chose none of them. I ignored all that, told myself it wasn't necessary for me to learn, or that it would take too much time, money, and effort.

You know what else takes too much time, money, and effort? Trying to find someone to make apps or websites do exactly what I want.

So I decided AI wasn't going to be one of those things I ignored until it felt too late.

I challenged myself to get comfortable with AI, and decide after 30 days if it was worth my effort or not.

*drumroll please*

I need AI. And that shouldn't surprise you.

First, I realized AI is so much more than ChatGPT fails and heinous AI generated images that look like a bad psychedelic trip.

Pro Tip: There's probably an AI that can help you streamline things in your life, personal or work, regardless of who you are and what you do.

I didn't know where to start, and being conscious of the innumerable choices out there, I just picked the one I had heard of the most: ChatGPT. I paid for a subscription immediately. I wanted to know what it was capable of, not what older models could do.

I was pretty sporadic for the first couple of weeks. Here's where it got real for me:

I asked ChatGPT for help to balance the chemicals in my hot tub and pool.

I had read the instructions, I was using the test strips, but for some reason I couldn't get the alkalinity and the pH to cooperate. I was also going through a lot of bromine to keep the sanitizer levels high enough, which I knew meant something was wrong.

So I explained all this in a long ramble in the app.

ChatGPT pointed out my mistake immediately.

I was prioritizing getting the alkalinity perfect before the pH, when the pH should have been the priority. The bromine was less stable at too high a pH.

I gave ChatGPT photos of the chemicals I had available — including their directions for use — and I told it the make and model of my hot tub. After a few seconds it told me the exact measurements to help get me back on track. With a few back and forths, I had a fantastic schedule/template for a maintenance log to fill out already formatted for my preferred notes app (Obsidian, btw).²

Realizing how well this AI had been able to handle so many different types of inputs, and create the exact outputs I would normally build for myself in a spreadsheet or doc was eye opening. It did so at least 10X faster than I would have by myself.

I was starting to understand.

I don't want generic writing in my social media feed.
I don't care for art that is a cross between Escher, Picasso, and a 'Spot the Difference' game.

I wanted AI to take over tasks to free up my time. Time is, after all, the only resource we have.

I wanted AI to do the things I needed done that take me longer to do than it should, and I wouldn't really benefit from doing by hand.

And it could. It could even transpose it all from one format to another if I changed my logging strategy mid thought.³

Now, this brings us to the (very valid) concern that outsourcing too much of our thinking to AI is going to be our downfall.

The fear is that people will never truly learn how to do things for themselves, that they will always be at the mercy of the software's programming — especially the ethics, or lack thereof, that it is made with — as it shapes people's perceptions slowly, over increasingly large populations, until you really can't tell who has their own opinion anymore or are we all just products of the algorithms we've let run loose in our lives, amirite?

Logically it makes a lot of sense. If you are only used to asking the right questions, and don't know how to do any of the work required to answer those questions, then how smart are you really?

Panic inducing, right?

It’s just plausible enough to make you pause and consider the possibility, the probability, that this will happen.

Because it will.

The question remains whether this is a bad thing or not, or whether this is just the next phase in the way we consume, create, and cooperate.

We won't know for some time. Perhaps decades.

I'm not losing sleep over it.

Mostly because there's nothing I can do to stop it. And partially because I recognize the grip of fear as an emotional response.

Enter those pesky Stoics, Stage Left.

When Marcus Aurelius, and before him Epictetus, said that we should hold back a response to a situation that causes an emotional reaction, this is what they were talking about.

I heard the fears. I share them. But instead of saying my immediate thoughts, I waited.

I haven't ignored the problem/question at hand. I've just paused long enough to take a breath and recognize that the way the information was presented brought on a fear response. It gave me room to consider any obvious reasons why that might be before trying to relax with the feeling, experiencing it without despair or fighting to get away from it.

I allowed it to exist.

And then I exhale and feel it dissipate, even just a little.

Technology always feels like this.

I was a Tactical Navigator on the CP-140 Aurora aircraft during my time in the RCAF. You don't hear the title 'Navigator' much anymore these days because, as the joke goes, GPS stole our job.

A little piece of tech that is now embedded in your phone can do the work required of a whole person a few decades ago. And it can do it faster, more accurately, and more reliably than I can.

I was taught how to fly using older tech. We used radio navaids that I would have to identify by listening to their Morse Code identifiers being broadcast through the air.

The audible dots and dashes told me what signal I was receiving, and a simple Direction Finder would point a needle on the compass the direction the signal was coming from.

Some arts and crafts with a map, some stuff involving time, and a bit of trigonometry later — all of which had to be done very quickly in my head — and I had a 1 mile circle on a map as to where I was.

Or, where I was a minute or two ago when I took the numbers down on paper. The aircraft was moving 3 miles per minute this whole time, so the longer it took, the further from that point I was by the time I told the pilot if any corrections to speed and direction were needed.

And that is probably the most useless skill that the RCAF spent a lot of time and effort teaching me. All because we were worried for far longer than you might imagine that our equipment would break, or the GPS signal would be wrong and we'd have to rely on some old school methods.

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The funny part is, they’re concerns were valid.

Shortly after I finished training at the Navigator School they stopped teaching Degraded GPS Navigation because it was no longer worth worrying about so much.

Two years later I sat in on a scenario discussion where GPS was deemed unreliable, and how we'd have to brush up on the old ways. Maybe teach some of the junior navigators what the Dark Ages looked like.

Imagine it. Me, hunched over my dimly lit log, scratching in code with my pen, pausing only to take a swig of lukewarm, disgusting coffee...

So yes, with such a rise in anti-intellectualism I do feel concern about outsourcing even more of our thought processes, but realistically that comes down to individual choice.

Smart people, innovative people, driven people will always find solutions. People lacking cognitive flexibility will not.

What have you done to not be left behind?
Have you hid behind your opinion of AI?
Is there ways for it to benefit you and improve your life?

I believe there is.

So I give you the same challenge: take 30 Days to go become familiar with AI, especially if you're opposed to it.

If it's really not for you, then you can carry on with your life in that firm and validated belief.

If it turns out you have some opinions to change, well, then I wish you good luck.

Changing our own mines can be the hardest one of all.

I write about the things I’ve found that make me feel like more of A Whole Man.

Relational Leadership is about challenging our own beliefs and knowing that change must start with ourselves. It is about walking the path we believe in, and inviting others to join us.

If you’re going through life and always feel like something is missing, then you’re probably in the right place.

1. I'm against companies training their models on the backs of people without paying them, but that's not an issue I’m discussing here.

2. Not a paid referral link, I just like sharing my favourite resources.

3. I had originally planned the Hot Tub Maintenance Log as a Trello Board, but realized that Obsidian would be faster for me to review historical data to spot trends. Yes, I am that kind of data nerd.