Nobody's talking about AI addiction as a problem yet, but it's already a fact of life, and many of us are probably suffering from it to one degree or another - for entirely primitive reasons.
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Our brains are wired for survival, instant gratification, and escaping danger. They're not wired to release dopamine that makes us feel happy and satisfied when we do something that will only help us somewhere down the line, in the future.
Ate some chocolate? You got dopamine. Scrolled through cat videos on social media? You got dopamine. Ordered a new car? You got dopamine.
When didn't you get dopamine? If you saved 2,000 shekels every month to help you age with dignity, chopped a cucumber and a tomato, or watched a linear algebra course.
We all know that in the end, saving, intellectual investment, and healthy eating will make us far happier, but the war against the rebellious biology standing in our way takes its toll, and we get used to giving in and getting through the moment at peace with ourselves.
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The danger of artificial intelligence isn't just the extinction of real jobs, but also the creation of imaginary jobs and products that will never be sold.
I've met many of these projects in recent months, and despite the passion and energy of the people who built them, in the vast majority of cases the product will rest in eternal peace in some digital archive.
The fact that suddenly we're all high-tech, we're all capable of building at the push of a button software that until recently required years of study and experience on the way to a shiny paycheck, and we're all capable of commanding an army of obedient agents that code whatever we ask for without complaint, causes our brains to release dopamine at the end of every session that reveals, with a surprise, the cool new feature we just built.
We need to look squarely at a few critical questions:
Does using artificial intelligence make us work fewer hours?
Does using artificial intelligence make us earn more money?
Are the things we build with artificial intelligence actually used by other people?
If the answer is no, we're doing something wrong that's harming us, and the fact that we still enjoy it anyway is an expression of addiction.
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I was there not long ago, and when this realization hit me, my life became easier.
The principles facing anyone leading innovation are: avoid building systems that no one is clearly going to use, avoid building systems with artificial intelligence when they can be built for a fraction of the cost and time using open source platforms, and invest the vast majority of your time in deep learning of the technology, with implementation remaining the small part at the end of the road.
Along the way, I discovered that every hour I invest in learning infrastructure, technological principles, and software engineering saves me countless hours out in the field of staring at Claude burning tokens for free.
I also discovered that Claude Code in a terminal, with an English keyboard, is all you need to build anything and solve any challenge, and the FOMO from the endless flood of announcements disappeared.
The month-long test can help you focus - each month, take just one project from all the ones you've been thinking about, and spend the month trying to turn that project into something real that people use or pay for.
Succeeded? Congratulations, you've built yourself a future. Didn't succeed? Kill the project and move on to the next thing. One of these projects will eventually turn into something, and along the way you'll no doubt learn a great deal.
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👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss and my posts are not written by artificial intelligence.
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