I only post on Sundays, but I felt like I needed this introspection, so I broke the rules. I made them after all, so I can break them just as well. (One of the few perks of being your own boss. The other is that nobody notices.)
Two days of my week went to a client I'm talking out of a build. He came asking for AI, fresh off one article too many on the plane. I'll end up telling him to buy the boring thing that exists, and to point the smart stuff at his mail and his documents, not his core. The advice is free, the build he'll pay me for. More than half of them get that same talk. It's honest work, and a strange way to spend scarce hours: being paid to tell people no.
The hours I love most, the building ones, are changing under my hands. Given clear instructions and a way to check its work, the machine codes better than I do these days. I say that as someone who has been paid to code for over twenty years. The thing I was good at is becoming a solved problem while I watch. For now, being early to that is my arbitrage. I know it won't last.
And it does something funny with the reward. A build used to pay out once every few months, when the thing finally shipped: a beer, a long sleep - the good kind - and a week of walking around like I owned the place. These days it pays out by the afternoon. Nice little jolt. By four o'clock I'm itching for the next one. Even building, the longest game I had, is becoming a fast hit.
The evenings went worse. An endless stream of AI video shorts has already proven to me that a machine can easily keep me engaged for hours. Will we turn into mind-numbed machines, chasing one hit after another? I don't know. I do know where Tuesday evening went: on the couch, thumb going, a cat, a man falling off a ladder, a cat again… Past midnight I looked up, eyes gritty, and couldn't name a single one.
Because underneath everything, we are a machine too, a wet one, running on chemistry instead of code. And I know exactly how mine gets fed. The shorts give my system a tiny shot of dopamine every few seconds, that's the whole business model.
A gadget gives it a bigger one. I've bought enough of them to know the routine: a week of refreshing the track & trace, one nice evening of unboxing, and then a drawer. ATM that drawer holds three chargers for things I no longer own.
Cars, boats: bigger gadgets, same result. By the third month it's just the thing you park.
A client that says yes is good for a week or two. I feel that one in the stomach, a warm little drop.
So every payout comes faster, and every one of them lasts shorter. Take my own trade: software lasts a decade, if you're lucky. How about longer term accomplishments? What about a roof above your head: security, trust, a place that's yours. Houses are forever, no?
How about my own house, my own plot of land? Build on it, be proud of it. The odds are someone did exactly that before me, maybe on that same piece of land, and it's long gone.
And then there's the longest term of all.
There's only 2 certainties in life: death & taxes. And I'm not sure about that first one.
My memento mori remains, and so does the thing my trade keeps learning the hard way: whatever we do by hand, the machines end up doing better. What I'm doing today won't matter in a few years. Think longer timelines: decades, centuries, and it won't matter at all. Everything I learned and will learn will be surpassed by an AI, potentially impersonating me.
Say you found a way to leave something of you running. Something that keeps learning, keeps answering, keeps sounding like you, long after you've stopped. Would that still carry you, or would it just be something wearing your name? I can't make my mind up. I'm not even sure I'd want to know.
Anyway. It's late. The house is quiet. The Mrs. went up an hour ago. Her side of the bed will be warm and she'll pretend to be asleep. Tomorrow there's a client to talk out of a build, and an evening to lose or not lose to the bubble-popping game on my phone. My thumb knows which one it'll be. The wet machine will want its payouts either way. Last time I checked, they never filled my bank account.
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
— Gone with the Wind