Renaissance or industrial revolution?

One of the criticisms I hear most about AI is that when you use it, you lose your critical thinking skills. That has not been my experience. Sam Altman said recently that he thinks AI will be more like the Renaissance than the Industrial Revolution. That matches what I see in my own work.

A few weeks ago, a colleague and I were stuck on the big questions about our budget. At what point can we afford a new hire? How much new money do we need to keep the team paid through the end of next year? If everything we're chasing comes in, can we deliver all of it? I've struggled with questions like these my whole career.

So I asked Claude one of my favorite questions: "Help me to think expansively and creatively about this problem. Give me five directions and build a quick mock-up of what they might look like." Two days later, we had an interactive dashboard that answered every one of those questions.

I spent many hours on it. I defined what we needed, cross-checked every number against our budget workbook and kept testing the system until I trusted it. I didn't sit back and let it do the work. But I could never have built it on my own, or even imagined how to.

That is why this feels closer to a renaissance to me. The repeatable work has moved off my desk, which leaves me room to think further than I could before.