AI, Journey Vs Destination
Frequently article’s I read are focused around the topic of AI. With the ever increasing trend of vibe coding, RAG, and advanced reasoning. As AI tools increase in value an important part of our lives decrease, the process.
Imagine you head to the gym, you’re lifting weights, focused on your excercise until you turn to see someone drive in a forklift, carefully they position it under the barbell rack and lift the entire rack off the ground. They hop out, pump their fists in the air and shout, “I’m lifted the most weights! I’m the strongest one here!” Obviously this situation is ridiculous, it’s easy to tell that the goal of going to the gym is not getting the weight off the ground, it’s the process of lifting the weight that’s important.
Yet it’s becoming increasingly difficult for individuals to see during the pursuit of an end product they are losing sight of the ever more important process. Simply the journey before the destination.
Vibe coding to me is the clear example of this in the AI space. Programming is ever more accessible and yet embarrassingly inaccessible as tools begin to streamline the process. It’s insanely easy to create prototypes of apps thinking that AI is amazing only to realize when you productionalize things you know how a massive code base with zero knowledge of how anything works. The important part of prototyping isn’t the product, it’s understanding the roadblocks, requirements and intricacies of the application.
One area I’m increasingly anxious of the impact of AI is learning. As students and lifelong learners alike begin to utilize AI to streamline their learning experience through things like reading, note-taking, brainstorming, etc that these tools are ruining the more important part. The journey itself.
The note you write and the note AI writes for you have very different outcomes. Your notes are likely not very well written, take a long time (compared to AI) and may be difficult for another person to consume.
- Finish the paragraph above with a chart showing note quality vs note outcome.
- See if you can find any studies about the topic.