Automatic consumption
Do you ever feel that AI creates more work for you than it takes away? You are not alone.
AI is fantastic for some tasks when given the right inputs. For example, give it a reliable precedent document which is close to what you want, provide it with the details needed to complete the placeholders in the precedent, and AI can save you hours of manual copying, pasting and formatting.
The problem is that it is extraordinarily easy to reach for AI for everything. It is embedded everywhere, including many places we simply don’t want it. As I draft this post in Word, an aesthetically displeasing Copilot logo sits ablaze in the corner of my screen. I don’t want AI for my writing. It can sod right off. But it won’t; it’s there, obstinate, desperate for attention. I can’t figure out how to make it go away. I could ask AI, but why should I take a break from my writing flow to ask AI how to remove an AI tool from my writing software? Maybe I need to start drafting on a typewriter.
Like most people, I was amazed when I first started using AI. I soon adapted to it, got used to it, and now I am increasingly irritated by it.
The problem is that it can turn the simplest task into the most complex. Take email. Say you have had a long back-and-forth with someone. Their latest email will take all of two minutes to read and fire off a response. But you can’t remember all the points that have been discussed in the chain or whether there are previous actions outstanding and, if there are, which of you is supposed to be doing them. So, instead of eyeballing the email chain and writing a response, you ask AI to do it. Next thing you know, you’ve got a thousand-word email with bullet points and subheadings in place of the one-liner you would have written absent AI.
Now you have choices: read the AI draft and attempt to edit it down, iterate using AI, or simply copy and paste it as your response.
The first takes more time than writing the email yourself would have done; the second also takes time, and the third one exposes you to the risk that the AI contains mistakes. None of these is a good outcome.