Your $20 AI Subscription Does Not Buy Expertise
Track 4: The Need for Speed⌚🛩️
Has anyone else noticed that as a culture AI is rewiring our expectations for how long it should take to complete a project? It used to take a day and a half for a good copywriter to produce a sales page (and a week or more for the less skilled writer), and now it can be done in as little as 20 minutes. The result might not be as good, but maybe it’s good enough.
The hit of speed we get with AI makes us impatient. Impatient to finish projects and optimize every daily task so that we are PRODUCTIVE or else we’ll fall behind … and never catch up. Too impatient to read, we turn to AI summaries. Too impatient to learn, we ask Claude to show us how without really understanding why something works. In itself, this isn’t inherently bad. I can drive a car without understanding how it works under the hood, but I do know it needs fuel, oil, air in the tires.
The speed fix that AI gives us creates the illusion that everything should happen faster. But what is the speed costing us? A disconnect in understanding and expectations.
We now expect to understand things as quickly as we can generate the information. Understanding takes depth of attention, repetition. Learning patterns and then recognizing how to use them.
AI can generate information but not the discernment of what to do with it.
It’s ok not to understand something and to ask for help. But the audacity I see from people wanting someone else to fix their AI mess - without compensation or even appreciation - is astonishing.
Problem-solving plus strategy is valuable. The judgment and wisdom of experienced people in the age of AI is even more valuable than ever. It definitely costs more than a $20 AI Subscription.