WorkLore

a.k.a. To AI or not to AI

With Chat GPT and other AI at our fingertips, why would we spend time ourselves to master a skill or complete a task? Why spend 10,000 hours becoming an expert when we can spend 10 milliseconds waiting for the AI to give us the answer?

Malcolm Gladwell’s argument in Outliers is that it takes an average of 10,000 hours to master a skill. To attain that level (with 2 weeks’ vacation every year), you would need to practice: 

Four hours a day, 5 days a week for 10 years.

Eight hours a day, 5 days a week for 5 years. 

That’s a lot of time! 

Some people have poked holes in Gladwell’s argument, suggesting that Gladwell’s number is wrong, and he himself recognizes that the 10,000 hours is an average, not a minimum threshold. Many simple skills will require much less time to master. Further, there are those who point to those natural athletes or artists who just seem to have the gift, and Gladwell admits natural talent can shine in particular situations. 

Where the 10,000 hours come in according to Gladwell is because “cognitively complex activities take many years to master because they require that a very long list of situations and possibilities and scenarios be experienced and processed.”

Ah! 

When you think about someone who you know is at the top of their game, an expert, in some cognitively challenging field, one of the things that stands out is their ability to find new solutions, to think of things others haven’t, or to invent new things. This is because they have processed so many scenarios and possibilities already, that they can extend beyond a small set of instances to create. 

Our AI solutions, like Chat GPT are primarily aggregators, built on our current knowledge, which means they then may be lagging behind, if even just a bit. Those true outliers, the experts that spend the hours to reach the top, are still going to be a step ahead. 

Maybe that’s not enough of an advantage for you, but for me, it makes those hours putting in the work worthwhile. What do you think?