AI as an accelerant, not a replacement

Christopher Butler: What AI Is Really For

My experience with AI in the design context tends to reflect what I think is generally true about AI in the workplace: the smaller the use case, the larger the gain. The larger the use case, the larger the expense. Most of the larger use cases that I have observed — where AI is leveraged to automate entire workflows, or capture end to end operational data, or replace an entire function — the outlay of work is equal to or greater than the savings. The time we think we’ll save by using AI tends to be spent on doing something else with AI.

This resonates with me. I personally get the most benefit from AI tools when I use it to accelerate my work, not so much to replace it. It's like Apple Shortcuts for me: it's not replacing my need to do anything, it's making some things easier or quicker than they otherwise would be. When I push it to do everything, it falls down.

I recently wrote about how my software development work looks a hell of a lot like traditional development, and I think that's the case for the other things I do with AI.