The author is a professor at Athens University.
If he truly believes this, why wait to stop thinking if AI is so capable? Why not have AI write all of your blog posts, papers, proposals, emails, conference presentations, letters of rec, etc? Read an AI script for your next keynote lecture. Every professor will be doing exactly that in the near future, as you predict.
Or maybe - maybe true critical and synthetic thinking will become even more rare and valuable than before. I actually find that when using AI in my job, I have to think more - I don’t get to do the slow work of crafting code anymore. I have to keep building my understanding of an ever-evolving codebase, on a cadence of hours. Because I have to explain what it’s doing at some point. I’m not sure that part goes away.
Or if I’m a professor writing grants or giving lectures, eventually I have to stand up and talk about it, and answer questions. So the machine can help me generate content, but I still have to internalize much of that content before I can confidently deliver it. So now that’s my rate-limiting step - the processing and digesting. I need to be doing that every day, and people will come to expect a new rate of output.
I think for some people, there will be an ability to tune out and become a manager of AI, just passing specs, requirements and feedback through. But I suspect that for many “knowledge workers”, the “knowledge” part is actually going to get more intense. That’s been my experience so far at least.
But maybe that’s just the last gasp of somebody being outcompeted by a thinking machine.
If he truly believes this, why wait to stop thinking if AI is so capable? Why not have AI write all of your blog posts, papers, proposals, emails, conference presentations, letters of rec, etc? Read an AI script for your next keynote lecture. Every professor will be doing exactly that in the near future, as you predict.
Or maybe - maybe true critical and synthetic thinking will become even more rare and valuable than before. I actually find that when using AI in my job, I have to think more - I don’t get to do the slow work of crafting code anymore. I have to keep building my understanding of an ever-evolving codebase, on a cadence of hours. Because I have to explain what it’s doing at some point. I’m not sure that part goes away.
Or if I’m a professor writing grants or giving lectures, eventually I have to stand up and talk about it, and answer questions. So the machine can help me generate content, but I still have to internalize much of that content before I can confidently deliver it. So now that’s my rate-limiting step - the processing and digesting. I need to be doing that every day, and people will come to expect a new rate of output.
I think for some people, there will be an ability to tune out and become a manager of AI, just passing specs, requirements and feedback through. But I suspect that for many “knowledge workers”, the “knowledge” part is actually going to get more intense. That’s been my experience so far at least.
But maybe that’s just the last gasp of somebody being outcompeted by a thinking machine.