The Technology You Are Afraid Of
AI has turned everyone into a product manager. You can think of an idea and bring it to life at a speed that was unheard of in the past. Never before in the entire history of human beings have we been able to manifest what we imagined and desired with such immediacy. This is a tremendous leap that we have taken, yet we have collectively gone numb to the scale of our own achievement.
We are more fearful of what we have built. There are protests to stop it because we are afraid it will take away our wage labour. But if you could build almost anything you could think of, why wouldn’t you want to leverage it? Why would you be penny wise and pound foolish?
I understand the fear of losing jobs. But the solution is right in front of you. The technology in your hands has no allegiance. It can work for you just as easily as it can work for your competitor. There is nothing wrong with upgrading yourself. The primary hurdle is not learning the skill. It is realising that you have nothing to think about. You are dead of ideas.
You like schedules and routines because they make you feel important, secure and comfortable. They do not push you to think harder, which can potentially expose you as incompetent in front of people who are more creative. That is the root cause of your insecurities. You have not dared enough to take risks, build a business, or try your hand at something genuinely novel and interesting.
You have become too soft, too comfortable, first in your academics and now in your mundane wage labour, that you have forgotten risking it all was the whole point. That comfort became the death of your courage. Now, when you have one of the greatest technological leaps in human history in your hands, you are afraid of it and want to shut it down.
But technology will not keep quiet. The players might collapse or close up shop, but the technology will remain in some shape or form. You can either get used to it or remain afraid of it until it does exactly what you were afraid it would do: replace you.