Welcome to the new world

Welcome to the new world, to the age of AI agents!

- OK... nice new world, but what’s changed?

- To know where we’re going, we need to know where we’ve come from, which is why I’m starting from the beginning...

Phase 1: The beginning, the human

Humans are complex beings... but quite simple in concept; they are animals that need to survive and ensure the survival of their own genes.

Phase 2: Society

And what better way to survive than through a good society? After all, there’s strength in numbers. So this animal became a social being who helps his fellow man: one grows wheat to sell to another who will make bread to sell back to him, and bang! There’s a society: some people grow vegetables, others weave clothes, others go hunting, and so on. Those who do something for society are held in high regard by society. But the slacker next door? Nobody likes him... He is unemployed and does nothing but consume the precious resources acquired by others, who receive nothing in return from him.

Phase 3: The optimisation revolution: Industry

Then came the industrial age! We found a way to optimise production using machines. We needed fewer people to produce the same amount! To feed the population, we went from 1 farmer for every 3 people to 1 farmer for every 1,000 people! The result: we have more time to do what we want, to enjoy ourselves, to weave finer clothes, to conduct research to advance technology, and so on. Consequently, we began to value intellectual work more highly than manual labour. And this is the world we have been living in until now...

Phase 4: Artificial Intelligence

Do you see where I’m going with this? A few years ago, reason was unique to humans, and that reason gave value to their existence. We valued our knowledge, our expertise, our ability to think and our ability to make decisions.

But now, AI is taking away this unique trait that was so distinctly human! Machines and tools have devalued our manual labour, and now AI agents are going to devalue our intellectual work, all our expertise in coding that took us so many years to master, yes, I’m talking to you, the computer scientists and IT engineers who’ve taken up playing Go! We’re all going to end up unemployed!

But what will become of us? In what kind of world will we find satisfaction in our work?

In what kind of world could working to build a website in three weeks with Claude Sonnet be satisfying, when Claude Fable can do the same job with a single, precise prompt in two hours?

But rest assured!

Let’s not forget that humans are social beings who prioritise the survival of another human over that of an AI model. We feel empathy for others of our own kind. They have therefore learnt to appreciate and value craftsmanship. A chess piece hand-carved by any talented Indian will be worth infinitely more than a mass-produced piece. Let’s illustrate this point with the game of Go: AI has become significantly stronger than humans, yet we continue to watch the games of the best humans, not the games of the best machines.

Conclusion

Ah, that’s fine, my daily use of Claude has been reset; I’ll be able to continue building the site, but unfortunately, I’ll probably have to retrain within a few years...

Article typed by Yannick Kuy