Arvind Narayanan

A similar mindset shift — from "what can AI do?" to "what should I let AI do?" — is also needed for individuals using AI for productivity, not just companies. I’ve seen it in my own work. For the last few years, my workflow continually kept changing as AI enabled me to automate more and more types of grunt work. But for the last six months, once I hit my stride with coding agents, my workflow has been surprisingly stable, because capability is no longer the bottleneck to delegation for me. To be clear, capabilities have continued advancing. I could probably have AI do my research and write my essays end to end. The quality might not be as good, but that’s not the most important reason why it would be a bad idea. The value of my essays is the voice and perspective that my collaborators and I bring. Whatever value there is in AI-generated essays, readers can get it by using AI themselves. In addition to this intrinsic reason to avoid AI overuse, there is also an instrumental one. The set of tasks for which verifying AI output is faster than doing it yourself is narrower than people think at first, and even narrower once you consider long-term skill atrophy. I'm sure the current equilibrium will gradually change, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts!