om parhad

The title of this blog might scare you a little. Maybe it should.

Not many people are seriously thinking about what an automation revolution really means. Artificial intelligence is evolving at an incredible speed. From the public release of GPT-3 in 2020 to more refined and capable systems that followed, progress has been relentless. Research keeps moving, products keep improving, and on the surface, everything seems smooth.

But then came powerful assistants, no-code platforms, and tools that can perform tasks that once required skilled professionals. Companies are automating aggressively. And honestly, why wouldn’t they? Automation saves time and money.

At the same time, layoffs are happening. Many students are struggling to find jobs. And this is the situation before we even reach anything close to superintelligence — a hypothetical level of AI far beyond human capability. Thankfully, we are not there yet.

Pause for a moment and imagine a future where technology is powerful enough to manage entire computer systems from a single instruction. What happens then? What becomes of the people who used to do those jobs?

I study artificial intelligence myself, and I find this worrying. Not the development of AI — progress is important — but the direction in which we sometimes push it. Imagine if the same intensity were focused on medicine, climate research, or space exploration. We could accelerate cures for diseases that still have none.

Instead, a huge portion of energy goes into generating images, automating routine creative work, or writing small pieces of code for us. Humans are capable of these things. So what happens to our skills when we slowly stop practicing them?

Take “vibe coding,” for example. It sounds fun, and yes, I do it too. But how will you scale an application built without a deep understanding? What happens when traffic increases, something breaks at 3 a.m., and the system crashes? Debugging requires knowledge, not vibes.

There’s also the physical cost. Massive data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, hardware, cooling, and land. All of this for convenience and speed. Is it always worth it?

Here’s something else to think about. When we learn or practice a new skill, our brain forms new neural pathways. That process strengthens memory and thinking ability. If we outsource too much of our work and thinking to machines, are we weakening those pathways? Are we, in a way, making ourselves mentally lazy?

Maybe. And I include myself in this.

This might sound like another rant about AI. Plenty of people are already doing that. But the real question is: are we reflecting deeply enough on the consequences of the direction we’re heading?

I don’t have a perfect solution. I don’t even have a clear answer.

This post is simply a collection of my thoughts, confusion, and curiosity about a future that is arriving faster than any of us expected. Maybe one day I’ll find a better response to the question in the title.

Until then, let’s keep thinking.