Laziness, Impatience, Hubris, and AI - by Arctortect
I’ve been feeling more and more like I’m letting AI do my thinking for me. Starting to use Cursor to write code was the most recent development that really made it clear.
I had such a clusterfuck in my head the other night trying to make sense of what I wanted to code. I felt drained, but not drained enough to stop because I had AI to help me. I prompted Cursor with these half-thought-out prompts, and expected it to infer what I wanted to do. I’ve become so lazy, I did not even reply with what it got wrong. I tried to will it telepathically when I said things like “this is wrong” or “that’s not what I meant” in response to its mistakes, with no initial elaboration on my part. But I had enough energy to give these nudges, and so that’s what I did. I kept trying to gesture to it that I wanted something, like in Spirited Away when No-Face is trying to say “take my money” with little grunts. Take my money. Take my brain. It’s indicative of a frightening form of faith in it.
What is driving me is an addiction to my sense of agency, and the desire to have maximal agency at maximal efficiency, measured by my level of effort and productive output. I want to know that these grunts of mine are making some sort of difference downstream. Grunting into a void is not compelling. Maximizing productivity at the expense of agency is not compelling. I don’t just want to watch the show, I want to direct the show with my thought. At least that’s what my chat history with an AI would have you believe.
