How the AI hype is changing human values

It wasn't long ago (only a year, to be precise) when it was normal for people to take pride in their work. People would rightly feel a sense of accomplishment when, after much thought and toil, their work was ready for the public. 

It was commonplace and not at all questionable for someone to boast that whatever they had created - a book, a game, or anything else made for the enjoyment, enrichment, or convenience of others - had taken a great deal of time, imagination, planning, and effort. 

Is it not curious that now the exact opposite is true? 

Maybe I'm trapped in an illusory AI bubble due to social media algorithms and the like. But a common mantra now is, "I did this in seconds with [whatever AI tool is trending that week]. It was so easy! I'll never have to [whatever they do for a living] ever again!" 

Never before have so many people been so enthusiastic about making themselves redundant so quickly.

Yet what concerns me here is not the ever-present threat of mass unemployment caused by what we now call AI (though it is, of course, something to worry about). What really bewilders me is the willingness of people to surrender credit for their achievements (or conversely to claim credit for the achievements of AI) and the excitement about not using their abilities and imagination. 

Don't get me wrong, whether it is AI or some other technology, I'm all for delegating tedious and mind-numbing tasks to a machine. But when we begin (as we have already done) to delegate creativity and skill to machines, what is left to take pride in? 

When my wife asks me, "What did you do at work today?" I might often tell her about an article I started or published, why I was happy with it, or what I learned while doing research for it. I can't imagine ever bragging that I got an AI model to write an article in a few minutes and published it in my name. Why would I be proud of that? 

The point here is not that AI is bad and we shouldn't use it (I used it for the image in this blog post). The point is we should value effort over laziness, thought over thoughtlessness, imagination over dull-mindedness, and take pride in what we have done rather than what we have avoided doing.