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💡 The Big Idea: Humans Are the Ultimate Context Machines

One of my favorite new podcasts is the AI & I podcast with Dan Shipper. It's a great podcast if you're looking to make sense of the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

One of my favorite episodes was the recent interview Dan did with Box CEO Aaron Levie about the role of AI and why he believes it won't take your job. Aaron does a great job of explaining what the machines are good at and why technology will likely always be limited by a distinctly human ability.

That's exactly what I want to unpack in this newsletter.

The New Economy

When I listened to this episode, I recalled a similar message I heard from author Cal Newport.

Cal wrote his book Deep Work almost 10 years ago (it was published in January of 2016). And while none of the AI tools we use now existed back then, he accurately described 3 types of people who would be successful in what he termed the new economy.

Those three groups were:

1. Those who have access to capital
2. Those who are the very best at what they do
3. Those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines

The last one, I believe, is most relevant to us today. To really leverage the technology that is available to us, though, we need to understand the crucial difference between jobs and tasks.

Jobs vs. Tasks

Tasks are individual units of work. These are things that technology (i.e., AI) can help us do not only more efficiently but more effectively as well. For example, just this morning I was chatting with AI about some title ideas for an upcoming YouTube video.

Jobs are essentially collections of tasks, so it's natural to assume that if you automate all the tasks, you can eliminate the job entirely.

But if history is any indication, that isn't likely to happen. In fact, the only job to ever be completely eliminated by technology is the job of elevator operator.

So while AI is great for helping me create videos, it's not great at creating the videos itself. For evidence, just look at the response to the recent Sora app, which has quickly earned the unsavory nickname of "SlopTok."

You can't eliminate the humans (at least, not for the foreseeable future). Every technological breakthrough results in a new human bottleneck. AI changes how we work, but it doesn't eliminate the need for critical thinking.

Which is why learning to leverage your PKM system to do your best creative work is more important now than ever.

AI is great at automating tasks. But jobs require more context.

And it turns out, humans are the ultimate context machines.

The Value of Context

AI tools like ChatGPT & the like are basically just prediction machines. And without context, these tools have limited usefulness.

True, there's still value in predicting what comes next in a string of text tokens. The most effective AI tools I've used (Spiral, NotebookLM, Lex,) can upload files along with prompts to provide greater context.

But it can't compare to the context you get from living in the real world:

In short, humans are better at context than the machines will ever be.

The Bottom Line: Stay Curious

Going back to Deep Work, there are two core abilities Newport says we'll need to thrive in the new economy:

• The ability to quickly master hard things
• The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed

AI can help us do both. But we can't be scared of it.

So we shouldn't be asking the question, "Will AI take my job?"

The question we should be asking is, "How can AI help me do my job better?"

The real key here is to stay curious.

— Mike