I'm standing at an intersection I never expected: AI has already changed what "engineering" means, while my personal wants and needs in life area also changing.
I normally don't write about the future or the relationship between technology and daily existence. But I find myself at a crossroads both personally and professionally. I'm watching technology advance at a rate where what has previously been the main actions and ways of performing my job will dramatically shift - to the point where it will be considered a different job entirely. At the same time, my focus as a human being has changed. I no longer want to sit in front of a computer for hours. I want to touch grass. I want to sit more.
A couple of months ago I started a journey into the world of Soto Zen Buddhism. One of the fundamental books for any beginner on this path is "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki. It starts by outlining the importance of "just sitting" in our daily lives - something that's been lost in our modern world. Suzuki wasn't just advocating for meditation as another task to check off. He was pointing to the quality of mind we bring to everything we do. But how can we be fully present to what's in front of us when we're constantly managing digital noise?
Since the iPhone came out, we've been folded into a world with things constantly happening, things that constantly demand our attention. This constant management of attention has eroded our social fabric. People no longer connect with each other as they once did - they're too busy managing the inbox of information hitting them at all times from texts, social media, and work Slack.
This is where AI gives me an immense amount of hope for the future.
It's now possible to manage all of my information intake automatically. Political spam texts? Deleted automatically. Friend group conversations? Summarized when I have time to catch up. Important events? I get alerted only when something actually matters. My assistant tracks all of my todos, finds great date ideas for my wife and me and books reservations, builds any tool I want and customizes it to make my life easier, reminds me about things, and builds software while I sleep.
In a previous era, people hired assistants to make their lives easier - to outsource the work they didn't have time for, to handle the things that just occupied mental space. But everyone has this power now at the tip of a keyboard.
In the last couple of months, I've built websites that create meal plans and shopping lists for my family so I don't have to spend time researching what we're going to eat this week. I've built tools that track all of my stock trades, do research for me, and prepare me for market open on Monday so I can make all my trades for the week without researching all weekend or thinking about it during the week. I've given my wife and me a personal assistant we can talk to over Telegram that has access to our shared calendars so we can find time for each other.
These aren't abstractions or possibilities. They're tools I use every day. And they're giving me back something precious: time and attention.
My hope is that we can use AI to make space in our lives to allow us to enjoy things away from our phones and computers. I hope we have time to build gardens at our houses to feed us fresh food. I hope we have time to make meaningful connections with friends. I hope we have time to volunteer to feed those who need food. I hope we have time to just sit.
In Soto Zen, we call it shikantaza - just sitting, with no gaining idea. Not sitting to become enlightened or productive or better. Just sitting. My hope is that AI can clear enough space in our lives that we remember how to do this - to just sit, and just garden, and just talk with friends, and just be present to what actually matters.
That's the future I'm building toward. Not one where AI does everything for us, but one where it handles enough that we can return to being fully human.