AI & Alienation

Now let's talk about the negatives of AI...

Lately, I can't stop thinking about Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 book. There, he explored the concept of alienation where workers become estranged from their labour, the product of their labour, themselves, and other people.

When reading the 182-year-old book, I can't help but draw parallels to the present time. With the increasing use of AI, we will feel even more alienated from the product of our labour.

About 5 years ago, when I was starting to learn how to code, my first creation was a very simple dental patient database and queue system for my mother's clinic. Despite the simplicity of the app, and it being not very optimized and likely full of bugs, I feel immense pride for being the creator of it. Why? Because I wrote every single character of the source code and it proved useful to my mother's clinic. Even now, thinking about it brings a smile to my face.

Today, Claude Code can spit out the same app in 5 minutes. Great, right? Not necessarily, because it doesn't hit the same.

With the help of Claude Code and Codex, I've "made" dozens of much more complicated apps & systems using agentic AI. But not one of them made me feel the artisanal pride of creating my first handwritten app.

That's the contradiction of creating with AI: we are much more productive but feeling less accomplished.

Because we can't point at it and shout "I created that!" without lying to ourselves.

That presentation that landed you the job? Yeah, it's all AI.

That funny speech that got you claps from the audience? Gemini made it from 1 prompt.

That brilliant idea that got praises from your boss? GPT suggested that.

That YouTube video that got 100k views? Yeah, it's your face and voice but AI wrote the script.

That thesis that got you your master's? Of course, 90% of it was AI.

The more we use AI, the more productive we are, but the more we feel like frauds.

If we can't even feel pride in the fruit of our labour, what are we working for?

*Every character of this post is written by me. That's the first one in a long time.