Introduction to AI

These days, it feels like every page you open or post you see on social media includes at least one line about AI and the impact it may have.

To be honest, I do think some of that attention is justified. However, I also do not believe it will mean the end of every job that can be automated. If the current AI boom follows patterns similar to the industrial revolution, many of the tasks we currently do manually may end up being automated in some form. That also means we need to look at current jobs and tasks differently and ask what value a human really adds to each one. In my opinion, the real added value of humans in any task is the bigger picture, of which each individual task is only a small part. Beyond the actual work, we are also social beings, and we often take an extra step when we know a colleague needs something more.

That is where I believe the next few years, or even decades, may take us. We will use AI tools to handle some of our tasks, while freeing up time and energy to make sure each task is carried out properly and in line with our standards and our colleagues’ expectations.

That broader perspective is what led me to try a more practical experiment. In the coming weeks, I am going to use GitHub Copilot on my open source Daily Note Calendar project to see how it can help. I will remain responsible for quality and for the relationship between the application, its users, and the community, while GitHub Copilot helps with the implementation work I assign to it.

Check out the Create a complete team with agents story for more on this.