The lazy and the curious

I don't know Lauren Ducrey but she recently posted what I think is the most concise summary of the uses of hashtag#genAI:

"This is my biggest question when I'm using AI: Am I being lazy or am I being curious?" (Lauren Ducrey)

There is the lazy path and there is the curious path.

Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong about following the lazy path. It gave us the steam engine (at least according to Adam Smith by way of Humphry Potter) and many efficiency-improving inventions. But that's the point, the lazy path is, by definition, the path to more efficient ways of doing things, and it is also the path of least resistance because cutting cost and removing inefficiencies is usually the first thing we can think of when a new technology becomes available (apparently there are also NSFW things people think about, but not here). But how about things that were not possible or even conceivable before that technology appeared? Discovering such things happens only on the curious path.

I like to think of lazy vs. curious as bottom-line vs. top-line focused. Cutting costs vs. creating value. Reducing inefficiencies is inherently bounded by how much there is to get rid of (although, obviously, a 100x speed up, for example, becomes a major innovation in and of itself). On the other hand, the potential value of the curious path is unbounded. hashtag

hashtag#genAI will improve efficiency and add 0.7% to GDP. In the short term. In the mid- to long-term, it may double GDP or make it irrelevant.