> "Some people like writing books. Other people wish they had written a book."

Other people think that books are a communication tool that you use in order to communicate something, and that something is the thing that is actually important. They may suffer from writing a book, and be embarrassed that they've written a book.

Enjoying the process is fine. It's a hobby, however, not a form of nobility, and enjoying it doesn't mean you're not terrible at it. If you think the book is the goal, you're lying to yourself. There are plenty of books, they're easy to get. If your goal is the reward that you receive from other people for the books itself i.e. if your goal is to create a valuable commodity, that's fine, too.

But a goal in writing books could be to convince or to inform. It's literally the pretext for all communication.

I always find it harrowing that having the goal when programming be to create a system that could enable people to accomplish some function, or could accomplish some function for people autonomously seems to be the farthest from people's mind. But it's literally the pretext. You have to be trying to do that or lying about trying to do that to even program at all. Making it a battle between whether the program that you're writing is a product/resume item or a fidget spinner abstracts away reality for a contest between ruthless capitalism and middle-class self-actualization. Greed and narcissism.

If you actually want to accomplish something in the world (other than burnishing your self-image), AI is just a tool, not a threat to your identity.