Maintaining Confidence When Tech Moves Faster Than We Do

It’s more than fair to feel unstable amidst the constant arrival of new tools and products, especially with the ongoing explosion of AI. Every other tool or technique is marketed as crucial to making you more effective in less time — helping you sound more confident in fewer words — increasing your output with less effort. The subtext there could be interpreted as implying that humanity, as it carries itself through the day-to-day, can’t keep up with the very society it has collaborated to create. The doom feeling of it all is (unironically) so empathetically human. Are we good enough as we are? Will our minds and bodies suffer if we aren’t forced to remember directions to the dentist, weigh the pros and cons of soil types in our gardens, or read and synthesize articles fully?

You’ve likely heard some version of the suggestion to go with the current instead of fighting against it, and I think we can apply that sentiment to the current we’re swept up in now: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and similar “smart technology.”

Consider what most day-to-day AI tools are here to do: take a process via a set of instructions you give and complete that process in a fraction of the time it might take you to do it. From helping you budget your next vacation to crafting engaging social media captions, AI tools enable you to offload time and energy. And as to whether AI is pushing us to be dumb or complacent — that’s only true if that’s the goal. If you put directions to the same places you’ve driven a million times into your phone, you get to choose whether that’s because you’d simply prefer to zone out and enjoy the ride or whether you’d like to know where speed traps and traffic jams are with enough time to prepare for them. Either is an empowered, autonomous choice that you deserve to make.

If you’re ready to engage AI tools, start small and controlled: compare an AI-generated summary on a simple web search to the effort it takes to read and synthesize multiple sources. Ask chatGPT to suggest a dinner plan that is conscious of your dietary needs. Take small, autonomous steps to get familiar with how AI can relieve pressure rather than make decisions for you — and enjoy that extra time and energy!

written by Nia McKenney
September 2024