A note on AI writing our emails and writing our lives quietly. (not AI Generated).
I was writing a long email to someone regarding a collaboration I wanted to do. I wrote how my skill sets, knowledge and expertise can align with the goals they are trying to achieve as an organization. I wrote a long note about how I bumped into their profile, how I bring my skill set, knowledge and most importantly my passion for their organization and their clients. After writing, I asked AI chatbot to make it more polished and more sophisticated. AI is great at it and it did its job. After a quick check, I sent the email. After a quiet walk and went back and read both emails. I had some fundamental realizations which I thought you might appreciate.
The mail I wrote with some slight imperfections, with some minor grammatical errors read far more personal, had far more passion, had far more authenticity and far more clarity. Dont get me wrong I am not here to bash AI and join the team bashing AI. there are two teams on AI especially on LinkedIn. one which is pushing how everyone is loser for not using and developing AI enough and other one bashing that its not a big of deal and causing productivity leaks and hype more than a solution. I dont fall in either camp but slowly realising that I am in the camp of my own 'Someone empowered with AI not led by AI'.
Every now and then people keep asking my spiritual master Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar about AI and its implications (mostly worried about job losses). In most of his answers he is excited about AI and its application rather than worry about its negative impacts. He is surely happy about advancements and sees this mania nothing new especially as far as job losses and disruption it can cause. You can view his podcast with Andrew Ng and many replies to such questions on youtube and other platforms. He made a funny comment recently when someone asked about potential impacts. He funnily replied ' Artifical Intelligence will hurt you if you dont use your own intelligence :D'. In some more profound conversations, he emphasised the need to access Absolute intelligence (refering to deeper profound intelligence of universe that runs everything quietly).
AI is productivity booster not your replacement. I want to highlight three major points
Artificial intelligence with BASIC human intelligence
Artificial intelligence with Absolute Intelligence
Artificial intelligence with Human ingenuity and Empathy
AI is meant to improve your emails, your content, your code not your true being. AI doesnt have the capacity to have access to our Basic intelligence, Absolute intelligence and human ingenuity.
Artificial intelligence with BASIC human intelligence
If you use AI without your Basic intelligence you will surely run into issues. you might have heard about millions of lines of code that is AI generated is already being refactored by humans who are trying to make sense of the code in first place. You would find hundreds such stories on the internet. why is this happening? because a human didnt use basic intelligence to begin with. If we are using AI to write code, it's a great tool but terrible if we see it as human replacement or replacement for objective Human intelligence. What really happened is that humans who gave the entire problem to AI without much context created such mess not AI. Now they are using AI to clean up the mess. You see you can not give vague prompts like ‘create a trading prop firm like Jane Street, create winning alpha strategies, write emails to all the potential funders, code those strategies and deploy them in cloud, run it in the real markets, put the profits in my swiss bank account as I am travelling to switzerland next week with my wife. I will see you with a billion dollar in my bank account next week. I am heading to play golf with my friends’. Obviously I am exaggerating it a little bit but many managers have started to believe that we can replace smart developers and architects if we learn to prompt properly and then we dont need them. In reality you need smart engineers who can use AI properly using prompts to do their work properly. Also an engineer cant prompt blindly and expect results. They have to ensure all the necessary architectural trade-offs are made, architecture has been reviewed both by AI and also passes through first principles thinking that humans have been trained to the job. He then needs to write all the test cases. Ask AI to help him write all the edge cases. After that he needs to review those test cases and add if they are good or not. I created high quality quant algorithms. There were thousands of prompts with AI. Vetting my ideas objectively with AI. Learning coding quant in a particular language. Every parameter and its value was deeply researched with the help of AI. AI coding agents were built in to solve some complex problems. Blindly copying pasting the code is not AI. A lot of self help AI gurus might want to convince you that we dont need coders any more but thats surely not true. A lot of layoffs have happened because of AI but a lot more have been done in anticipation of productivity boost that AI can do. Its a mess we are going through and would need a year or so to stablise. So hang in there if you are having jitters. Its a transition phase not destiny written in stone.
Artificial intelligence with Absolute Intelligence
AI is a productivity booster not the way to have access to Absolute intelligence. This world where there are billions of stars, universes, galaxies which operate pretty much by themselves is sign of absolute universal intelligence. While suddenly prompting to chat bots might make you feel smarter but realising that the world is an eternal cosmic dance and we are just here for a limited time might make you grounded. With spiritual practices like Meditation and knowldege of self without religious dogmas, a deeper sense of curiosity opens up the possibilities that you cant prompt to a chatbot. While last 2 decades have witnessed unimaginable number of people taking up meditation to combat stress of their life, the next decade will see even more people taking up these practices not only to combat stress but to create a space within themselves that allows them to stand apart in this AI mania. I have been a volunteer with the art of living for more than 15 years, time during covid and the current AI disruption were the times where I am seeing most people developing an inclination towards the same. If you want to learn to begin your meditation journey, feel free to reach out to me.
Artificial intelligence with Human ingenuity and Empathy
Humans are the most intelligent species for a reason. While AI can generate code, write content, create content and even make full length feature films but it cant create bonds like human do. It cant be witty like humans. It can not have deep empathy. Mothers love will still be relevant, maybe a little more. We will form communities. Qualities are genuine human compassion cant be replaced by AI. We would need smart and compassionate people to run the countries, organisations, families. We would need humans to have an oversight on whatever is being done in the name of AI. Also human who think independently of AIwill be in demand. People who use AI to both work on idea or reject it will be appreciated. People would still go watch human perform in theaters, stand up acts, plays. In fact people would start craving human with human emotions in the world which is filled with people barking about AI. People need people to Laugh with humans, cry with humans, express deep emotions with humans. No AI can replace a loved one who cares and connects. No AI can replace the jumping with joy dog craving attention and showing love. Relax and reflect we are humans who created AI and other way round.
We have to empowered with tools of AI to make our lives productive but AI will not decide your future, you will. Your creativity will decide your destiny and not AI. Your empathy will decide how deeply you connect and not how well you know prompting.
