Look I am no fortune teller but I am not naive. What AI may bring to our lives and take away from it, is a topic worth studying over an extended period of time. Such a massive technological shift and its repercussions cannot be experienced or seen in a short amount of time. Its like saying one had understood the problems social media comes with in the early 2010’s.
Back then, everyone was busy using Facebook to connect with friends and family. Uploading photographs. The world was getting connected socially. It’s only now we are truly able to grasp the long term ramifications of what social media did to us. Although we are connected virtually with everyone, the world at large is more disconnected than ever before.
Likewise, AI may have long-term implications.
Maybe our learning abilities diminish, problem solving capabilities reduced. It could well change us fundamentally in aspects we can percieve and beyond.
Before you read any further, I want to clarify something. I’m not against using the latest in technology. In fact, I am one of the early adopters when it comes to technology. The world values outcome over what goes behind the scenes as effort to produce an output that led to an outcome. That is true now as it was some 500 years back.
How many of you know the great amount of learning Alexander had to go through under Aristotle in Mieza. My guess: very few. Yet every one of us knows the accomplishments of the Great Alexander. Conquering the world at breakneck speed. Outcome will always overshadowed efforts.
Below are my observations seeing the world change as AI gets integrated into more than one aspect of our lives.
AI accelerates output generation quickly, fast, and in no time
Many new technologies give us advantage in time. Software and hardware matched with capable AI models, can help us go from idea to output in a matter of seconds. There simply isn’t any need to know about the foundations.
Yet, being an observer, I love the journey of learning the fundamentals as much as appreciating the outcome; if not more. AI may just be robbing us of this journey. The journey to learn something: the technicalities of it, the foundations, failing and relearning, and finally to produce an output.
We stopped 30 kms outside the city limits
A few days back, I was on a small outing with my childhood friends. We were driving around the northeastern parts of the city, trying to take some photographs of the sunset which was about to unfold in front of us.
As I was witnessing the god beams piercing the clouds with its golden orange light, contrasting perfectly with the violet coloured rain clouds, I saw the frenzy with which my friends started taking photographs. A few of them were taking shots of the sunset, and some were having their photographs taken with the background.
With a few quick shots done, I asked Sap to give his phone to me, so that I can take a photograph of him. After taking a few shots, I went to give Sap his phone back. Just out of curiosity I enquired. “How have the photographs come out?”
What I saw shocked me. What would have taken at least 15mins of desktop editing after capturing a photo on a digital camera, the phone was able to produce an equivalent output in an instant. Literally, in an instant.
It had lowered the highlights and lifted the shadows just the right amount. It ensured skin tones were not affected much. In fact, it brightened the face ever so slightly, just like how I would have done, if I had to edit the photograph on a desktop application.
If we look at the above incident from a consumer PoV, someone taking photographs to keep personal memories or, say, for example, posting a few photographs on social media, it really does not make much sense to go ahead and learn the intricacies of photography and editing. The technicalities of it. There’s no reason to do that. The phone with its AI capabilities is doing it automatically.
AI just does it for you
Why go through the pain of learning? The sum total of a digital camera + SD card + Laptop + Editing Software outweighs the cost of a phone many times over. There’s no reason to invest all that money to learn photography and editing if all you want to do is take photographs for memory.
The above is a personal use case. Taking photographs for memory.
But what about using AI in a professional environment?
AI in a Professional Environment and its limitations
Over here, the tables turn 180 degrees. If you do not know the technicalities, you are at the mercy of AI to deliver the output. Even if you give it the best of the prompts, as we all know, sometimes it just cannot give the right output in a predictable fashion. We conviniently say, the AI is hallucinating. Ok great. But the end user is not interested in listening to a story of how AI can sometimes hallucinate. All the end user is concerned with is when and how quickly he can get his hands on the output. At that point in time, being a professional, if you cannot deliver on the output, you lose your value once and for all. In such cases, it is indeed important to know the foundations.
Suppose a software product is completely built with AI. Initially, it looks great. You start getting a few customers. Paying ones. Then suddenly something for some customer breaks. Unless you really know the background of version control and DB management, I can imagine the kind of soup you may be in, wherein the software product is not working for a customer, and you try to provide detailed prompts to the LLM such that the issue gets fixed ASAP.
By the time you finish debugging and rectifying the problem, you find the AI tool has got overcharged, with a lot of tokens being used. The more complex the software, the more there is a need for having someone with expertise to handle that AI, rather than any random non-technical person handling it, using multiple prompts and exhausting the full bank account just by purchasing token after token after token. Each usage of a token requires real money.
We can’t learn everything. That is exactly where AI helps.
Take this personal blog, for example. I end up writing a few articles on this website as different ideas come to my mind. In under 5 months, I have written more than 100 articles, 50% of them published already. The remaining 50% are pending an edit. Suppose I need to make a automated system of interlinking wherein, when I write a new article, the “system” automatically suggests old articles which can be interlinked with the new one. Without the use of LLMs, I would need to study a lot of computer science to build a recommender system. But with the help of tools like ChatGPT or Claude, building such a system becomes possible even for a novice user.
Just to solidify the point of AI helping us with another example. My work necessitates I am able to sell more products by using data and consultative methodologies. I am no Power BI pro. Yet, with the help of AI, I was able to visualize (with Microsoft Power BI) the product data, its usage, and usefulness in an easy-to-understand form, which has resulted in 100% growth of the product ever since I took over the product growth strategy. Without AI, this would have been an impossible task for me. It was the AI which guided me step by step in getting what I wanted.
So you see, it is not all bad when it comes to AI helping us achieve our objectives and goals.
Would AI make us lose the skill of learning? Only time will say
We’ve already lost the skill of growing our own food. Ask any city folk; their grandparents used to grow a few vegetables even on city rooftops/balconies. Does the current generation know how to grow their own food? I bet 90% of city folks cannot grow food on their own. Even if it is for a very small quantity. We are on the verge on losing the skill of holding attention for long periods of time. We’d rather condense the information in small 10-second video content.
In my day-to-day work operations, I use AI in multiple use cases. More towards increasing efficiency than creation.
On this website, whatever you read is created 100% by a human. For me, this is a space I utilize to learn the art of writing. The reason I do not use AI is precisely that. I am trying to learn. Not produce an output.
You may ask, “What is the purpose of learning if output is the only thing that is valued?”
I ask you a question in return:
How do you think you will spend your time when AI does everything for you? You would need to learn to sit quietly, doing nothing for 16 hours a day.
That’s learning.
Since AI would be doing everything for you, you may need a hobby or do something to pass the time. Maybe learning how to paint or write.
That’s learning again.
If the food comes to your table automatically because AI has completely eradicated world poverty, how do you pass through the 24 hours in a day?
You may need to learn the skill of being STILL. Meditation possibly?
That’s learning. Learning to medidate and do nothing. being one with yourself.
Superintelligence in AI comes from recursive learning. As a species we may get extinct when we stop seeking, exploring, learning.
To learn or not to learn. Only time will tell.
Thanks
DB
September 15th 2026