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Feeling bad about using AI

It’s September 2024, I’m sitting in my setup developing a new side project. I’m using ChatGPT to help me with the development. And it’s insanely crazy.

I have no much free time to work on side projects. But this is a game changer.

Things you would spend weeks or months to do, with AI you can do it in hours or even minutes, whether you are building your new feature that nobody asked for, solving a problem, doing research or debugging.

You are faster than ever.

You are able to do more things than ever.

Man can now do more than one thing at the same time.

But then, you start to feel bad about it.

You start to feel guilty for using AI to do things that you could do manually.

You think that you are not being creative enough.

That you are not learning.

You are not good enough.

Great, the impostor syndrome is over 9000.

I have been there.

We have passed through here

When the internet was born, we were scared. People said that it would make us lazy or even dumb, and here we are, driving autonomous cars, ordering food, buying things from the other side of the world, talking to anyone in the world in a matter of seconds, and million other things.

More advanced than ever, faster than ever.

Now we are passing through the same thing with AI. It’s something new, we are just starting to understand how to use it, building new tools around it, and since we are animals, we are scared of the unknown.

AI it’s here to stay. It’s not going away, no matter how much you resist it, and even worse if you resist it, you are the one who will be left behind. Just imagine yourself back in the school saying “No teacher, I’m not going to use the calculator as my colleagues, I’m going to do it manually 🤡“. Because you are the smartest guy right? Or at least that’s what you want to believe.

It’s not only fear the unknown but also the lack of self-esteem, and the seek for approval from others.

Embrace AI

I’m not saying AI is the answer to everything, in fact, it’s not. At least not for now. If you are dumb, you are going to be a dumb with AI. It’s just a tool, a great tool but a tool nonetheless. You need to know what AI is doing, the architecture and patterns it’s using, you don’t want to be one of these vibecoders who don’t even know what is a variable, he might be able to lauch an MVP, in the best case scenario, but it’s going to be funny.

All this time I’ve been feeling bad about using AI, with such a mental battle. But you know what? I surrendered, and I can explain you my reasons and you may have a different opinion of course, but this is my blog so let’s go to the point.

Ask yourself the next super simple question:

👉 What is your goal?

  1. 1- Gaining a trophy to the smartest guy in the world and have 0$ and no time
  2. 2- Have more free time to enjoy your life, solve problems faster and get more money

I don’t know about you, but I choose the second one. Maybe if you are a vain person the first one is for you.

But again of course, learn at least what a variable is.