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Weekly Reflection #3 - AI, Curiosity, and What Won't Change
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Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) InsightIt’s easy to dismiss new tools. It’s just as easy to catastrophize them. But I think we miss something when we frame AI tooling either way. When it comes to cutting through the AI hype, two engineers I deeply respect have been on my mind lately. First, Brian Kernighan (Bell Labs, Unix, awk, C), who has been in computing since the 1960s. When we spoke with him on Book Overflow about AI and LLMs, his take was refreshingly grounded: “Is that going to drive programmers out of business? No. Is it going to change the way they operate? Probably.” He elaborated on his use of LLMs to write some Python with surprising results. He was pleasantly surprised by what it produced but he was not entirely satisfied. After applying decades of judgment to change and verify the results, he was able to build something interesting and worthwhile that he wouldn’t have otherwise. The other is Filippo Valsorda. He is a cryptographer who recently pointed Claude Code at a bug in his post-quantum signature implementation. It found the issue immediately. His reflection: “There is no need to trust the LLM or review its output when its job is just saving me an hour or two by telling me where the bug is.” No panic. No dismissal. Simply curiosity, a healthy dose of skepticism, and a willingness to experiment. That is the world of AI tooling that I want us to cultivate and explore. One where we decide how to use these tools to enhance our deepest creativity. WisdomWith how quickly things are changing, it’s worth pausing to consider what won’t change. “I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two—because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.”
— Jeff Bezos
This equally applies to developing deep expertise. The tools may evolve, but the core principles of craftsmanship, critical thinking, and continuous learning remain constant. ReflectionWhat’s the last tool you approached with genuine curiosity? Lagniappe (a little something extra)
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