alt Hacker NewsI think AI has also devalued a lot of work that previously might have been "mundane" but still felt like an accomplishment once you got it done. But now you can do that work to an ±80% quality level of the old, manual way, but in 1% of the time.
So the result is noticeably worse, but you basically must do it, because the efficiency gains are inescapable. This makes the work seem even more pointless, adding to the feeling that you're working more and accomplishing less.
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Aluminum used to be more expensive than platinum. Now we crumple it up and throw it in the bin. AI has done the same thing to the cost of a line of code.
> But now you can do that work to an ±80% quality level of the old, manual way, but in 1% of the time.
But what happens when the 20% quality margin that we lost aggregates over different layers of infrastructure and compounds into brokenness and chaos?
100%.
And a corollary being that without any time spent on the "mundane", almost every single aspect of the work becomes the genuinely consequential decision-making steps.
Which I find exhausting.
I see this directly. I'm an engineer but part of that is doing non-engineer work like making powerpoints, whitepapers, and generic work that's necessary but that I would delegate to someone else if I were high enough on the totem pole.
AI gives me the ability to do that stuff faster so I can focus more on the 20% and the quality of what I'm doing, not the nuance of formatting a document.
I have a completely different perspective on this.
During the day, I am using Opus 5.5 to develop solutions our team would never think was possible two years ago.
Ar night I am watching my 5yo learn how to read and do math. The sense of accomplishment he shows being able to add double digits is contagious.
Nothing is mundane. One man's basic work is another man's magic. When we have appreciation for each other, we advance more as a species.