Every now and then, an AI company releases a new model, and thousands of linkedin parrots jointly tell you that "software engineers are done", "I can build any app in 4 minutes from my phone", and so on.

At the center of every claim, the idea that you can "one-shot" a work with a prompt. You eliminate the work, sort of.

Beyond the obvious overestimation of how good AI is (it can't one-shot well anything), the deletion of the work itself has deeper implications. For everyone who was working before AI, writing good emails to organize the work would take one hour. Preparing a committee agenda would take 2 hours.

Yes, it was taking time. Yes, sometimes, it was annoying. But it is precisely spending this time tinkering, doing back and forths, hesitating, writing something then deleting, replacing, that can lead to insights. Maybe this topic isn't that relevant after all. Maybe I shall change my approach altogether. Maybe the the actual task I'm working on right now isn't the top priority. It's precisely doing the work that gives you the opportunity to take some critical distance with the work.

When you delegate everything to an AI and hope the work will be a "one-shot"? No skin in the game. No struggle. No possible insights.

Spending focused time doing something and mentally "fighting with it" provides some reward. You get what you're doing. You see the flaws. The why behind the choices were made.

I think that AI-assisted work is compatible with this, but only with efforts: you have to have an intention, set a direction, express what you want, review the outputs, challenge assumptions made by AI. Yeah, here, you can benefit from AI use.

But this one-shot prompt madness? Crap. It's just lazyness at scale. Shitty work you shouldn't share with anyone, unless you already gave up on the idea that humans can still do quality.