Offload Complexity, Don't Offload Learning

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A couple of months ago I read this excellent blog post by Steph Ango (better known as Kepano on Twitter), immediately this post struck a chord for me specifically while thinking about leveraging AI as a tool.

The post talks about a parasite and it's impact on us over time. Specifically this parasite is the act of delegating understanding, there are many parasites that take on the same format though (e.g. offloading your competitive advantage as a business). Broadly speaking, technology can sometimes be this same parasite masquerading as something beneficial - and that applies to how we leverage AI.

Fundamentally I look at AI as a tool for folks to leverage to help solve their problems, in the same way that most programmers look at frameworks or libraries. However, just as you and I would spend time evaluating the [[right tool for the job]], we should also carefully evaluate how we use AI.

Specifically - we should look to offload complexity to AI, but to not offload learning.

A similar mental model that folks have probably heard of before is maintaining a moat if you are a business. The moat represents your competitive advantage, it is what a business does (or maybe explicitly doesn't do), that makes it better than their competitors. It is the 11 herbs and spices, or the secret recipe.

If a business were to offload that competitive advantage to some other provider, or to another company - they'd cease to be a competitor within the market and others would soon take over.