I know more than AI

I had deleted a working function today. It ran smoothly, clean and better written than the one in my mind. I removed it because it solved the problem in the conventional manner, and I'm not constructing something typical. This may appear arrogant. AI is likely more knowledgeable than me about almost every topic one could name. Syntax I've never encountered.

Tests I would neglect to write. The name of the algorithm I repeatedly misinterpret during the dead of night. Pose any question with a documented answer, and AI outperforms me without any apparent effort. However, people often confuse this for intelligence. What AI truly possesses is the most comprehensive record ever compiled of what typically follows.

A billion individuals have typed words on the internet, and AI has learned the structure of an average sentence, function, and opinion about an average situation. It is the most widely-read entity in history, having never been present in any room. I have been in the room. I understand how you will respond to this sentence because I know my audience.

I know which message will be forwarded to a friend and which will cause you to close the tab. I didn't look up that information. I acquired it by uttering the wrong statement to real people and observing their facial expressions change in real-time, a training process with a smaller dataset and a higher cost per sample. And I know how the project I'm constructing should be built because I can see it, and it doesn't exist yet, so no one has written about it.

A model can amalgamate everything that has been created. It cannot desire something that does not exist. Every suggestion it provides me is an argument for the existing world, voted upon by every individual who has previously built it. Beneficial. Yet also the exact opposite of the goal. Furthermore, there is the last point, which I do not negotiate.

When the creation is mine, I do not delegate the decision-making. Not because the output might be worse. Sometimes, it could be better. However, the taste is the product. Eliminate the thousand minute decisions that only I would have made, and you are left with something functional and devoid of ownership. I didn't initiate building to end up with that.

Now, I continually circle back to the line that initiated all of this: AI is only superior to me in areas I am unfamiliar with. Contemplate this for a moment. Its advantage over me is precisely the magnitude of my ignorance. Not a single inch larger. Where I have genuinely put in the effort, it is a swift assistant with no opinions.

Where I have not, it is a deity. This implies that the gap was never a factual attribute of the machine. It is a reflection of me. This should feel like a threat, but it does not. It is the most motivating concept I have contemplated all year. The list of areas it outperforms me is merely a to-do list. It does not become more intelligent about my life, users, product, room, or any other aspect.

I become less outsourced. Every subject I learn comprehensively, down to the smallest detail, is permanently removed from the board. It will surpass me tomorrow in more aspects than it does today. Fine. Those aspects are all gathered in the same pile, and the pile has a name: what I have yet to tackle. Therefore, I deleted the function.

I crafted a worse version. Slower, less elegant, an unsuitable name I will regret in six months. It accomplishes one thing that the refined version would never do, and that single aspect is the very reason the product exists. No user of the product will be aware that a cleaner version existed. No benchmark will detect this. No model would ever have suggested this.