Will AI Replace Me? Maybe Not

There's been a lot of talk lately about how AI will replace humans so I decided to conduct an experiment.  I used a popular AI tool (I'll let you guess which one) to write a series of articles titled "Cybersecurity:  Things I Wish I'd Known".  Here's what I found.

AI Will Save You Time But You Still Need to Proofread

The articles the AI tool wrote for me were very well written and formatted but I still had to do some minor editing.  And by minor I mean I read over the article and removed a sentence here or there if I thought the paragraph was too lengthy.  I also had to make sure that if the article contained any commands that they looked correct.  So, even though the AI tool did most of the writing, I still added my own touch to make it more appealing to me.

How Much Time You Save Depends On Your Familiarity With The Topic

Because I was already familiar with the topics I was asking the AI tool to write about, all I really had to do was skim over the articles to see if I was in agreement with what the tool wrote.  It was more of an exercise in jarring my memory.  

Had I asked the tool to write about something that was completely new to me, I probably would have taken the time to do more research to see if the AI tool was giving me correct information.  I also would have probably taken the time to create a test lab in which I could try the commands that the tool provided for testing the appliances.  

I hear lots of programmers are using AI tools to quickly generate code.  The reason they can do that is because they are already familiar with programming concepts and they know how to compile or run the code to test it.  If you are brand new to Python and you ask an AI tool to write a script for you, do you know enough to take the next step?  

Hence, using AI can greatly increase your productivity if you already know what to look for.

And How Much Time Did I Save by Using AI?

I would say I saved one to two hours per article.  That doesn't sound like much but that can add up.  I only wrote four articles; what if I wanted to be really prolific and decided to write 10 or 20?  That savings in time would really make a difference.

AI Is Good For Sharing Information But Not Experiences

The reason I'm not writing this blog post using AI is because I'm not just sharing data, I'm sharing an experience.  What I'm writing in this article is unique to me and my situation.  I didn't ask the AI tool to give me a list of things most often left out of a cybersecurity curriculum, I looked to my past to identify those things I wish I'd known before getting into cybersecurity.

An AI tool can help you plan out an itinerary for a vacation trip but only a human can return from that trip and share with their friends and family how that trip changed their lives.

So Will AI Replace Me?  It Can't

Oh sure, maybe someday someone will use AI to automate my job so I'm no longer needed in my current role, but it won't replace me as a person.  My life cannot be fed into an LLM and then implanted into a synthetic version of me (who would want another me anyway?).  Will AI take some jobs?  Given the previous revolutions in how work is done, that's a very high possibility.  But it takes a human to make a difference in the lives of other humans.  And that's why humans can never be replaced.