Let’s set aside the harmful impact AI has on artists (copyright), the environment (GPUs want electrons), and humanity (enforcing existing unfair systems) in general for a sec. Let me share where I’ve personally extraxted the greatest value from AI.

I don’t find that AI does my job better than I do it. That is, the job I’m personally an expert at. For example, AI doesn’t write better Go code than me. It can write code faster, and even after I’ve corrected it’s output (if it’s written using a very refined Claude task or agent), it is likely net faster than me in solving problems. Although, I dislike the fact that AI does the “fun” part of my job faster than me…

Newspaper quote from Joanna Maciejewska saying “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”

But what it is better than me at, is producing text, in particular code, that I’m not an expert at. For example:

  • LaTeX and Beamer, e.g. for presentations.
  • Manim animation code in Python.
  • Custom plugins in Lua for my neovim text editor.
  • Templates and style sheets for my blog powered by Hugo.
  • Writing native-sounding Japanese based on the equivalent English.

And more generally, I recognize now that it’s value is bringing the standard of everyone’s non-core text-producing skills up to a higher standard.