For me, it's not just the buzz around AI. Frankly, looking back, everything from Super VGA graphics and GUI operating systems to USB ports, voice input, gacha mobile games, Dota, JSON, and even MongoDB has felt, at some point, like an insult to life as I knew it.
But life teaches you lessons. One of the harshest? No matter how skilled you are in your craft, eventually, you'll face the "firearms" that render your hard-earned "martial arts" obsolete.
I come from a different time. I learned to type on a clunky mechanical typewriter. I practiced calligraphy with brush and ink. I worked with traditional lathes and saws. I've been "blown away" – made irrelevant – by technological progress more times than I can count. The thing is, I got knocked out of the race early on, so I stopped complaining about it a long, long time ago.
Decades ago, I accepted the reality: the new "firearms" will negate the skills you spent ten years perfecting. And then? Those firearms themselves will be replaced by something even newer. The only unchanging truth is that technology will keep advancing. You can either accept this reality now, or you'll be forced to accept it later. There really is no alternative.
Now, we have AI. It's incredibly useful, undeniably powerful, and yes, it carries potential dangers. But like nuclear energy, narcotics, airplanes, chemical fertilizers, firearms, or television before it – whatever harms it might bring, we can't simply rewind the world to a time before its invention. The best we can do is try to manage it, legislate it, and regulate its use.
Choosing to reject technology, embracing a kind of modern Luddism, is often a privilege reserved for the wealthy. I once knew a farmer who lived a completely traditional life, farming his own food using century-old methods. He could afford to do that because he owned the entire mountain. He had the choice to opt out of modern tech.
Most people don't have that luxury. The poor have no choice. For them, the rational move is to adopt new technologies as quickly as possible to survive and compete. Just look at agriculture – small, struggling farmers rely on chemical fertilizers because it's the efficient way forward.
There's an old saying: "All banquets must eventually come to an end." Every era concludes. Every skill set eventually becomes outdated. Every one of us will, sooner or later, be surpassed.
Knowing this, accepting this inevitability, perhaps a little earlier rather than later, makes navigating the relentless tide of change just a little bit easier.
