The innovation and how evolved
For a long time, the core idea behind human innovation was to improve our lives. The industrial revolution allowed us to move faster, produce more, travel, and experience more and mre enjoyable quality of life. Later, the digitalization change the world with a revolution. It made work and entertainment incredibly accessible. Suddenly, you could get almost anything with a single click without even leaving your house, to such an extent that working from home became a reality.
Throughout all these advancements, the ultimate goal of technology was to replace manual, repetitive jobs. The dream was that people would be freed to work with their minds instead of doing mechanical tasks that don't require much thought. We believed that people find more dignity when they can use their brain, managing things, making decisions, collaborating, building, and using their creativity. These are the things that feed curiosity, satisfaction, and pride, with the goal to improve our overall wellness.
But then AI became reality, and it took a different turn. Back in the day, we thought we would eliminate manual labor first. However, it turns out that building physical machines capable of moving and performing like humans is much more difficult than we believed.
Instead of replacing the body, we have built something that replaces the brain.
In my opinion, this is our condemnation. Given the latest results from AI companies, we are seeing models improve every single day. A clear example is the solution of the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem operated by OpenAI agents. An internal model coordinated thousands of autonomous AI agents to solve one of the Millennium Prize Problems in just 88 hours [1].
For decades, society has pushed young people toward STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) because they were the safe paths that guarantee economic stability and relevance. But what I see is that every of these technical disciplines are potentially replaceable by AI. AI models can develop, maintain, and identify fallacies in any techical project. Thus, it looks like the most unreplaceable jobs are going to be those where the human component is fundamental. If you studied a technical subjects, the harsh reality is that either you are in the best 3% of your field, or you should start finding an alternative. Sooner or later, the chances of becoming irrelevant in your role are very high.
The feeling of irrelevance
This might sound pessimistic, but it reflects a growing sentiment across the tech industry. Many modern workplaces strongly push employees to use AI to solve problems. It is hard to admit, but they work really well. In practice, the tools provide context faster, write cleaner code, and possess a far broader knowledge base to propose architectural changes than a typical junior engineer. For someone who is in the beginning of their career, this creates an unsettling sense of irrelevance. Motivation drops quickly when building something manually starts to feel like an educational exercise rather than a genuine contribution, simply because the machine could have done it better anyway.
This personal experience brings up some deep concerns about the broader future. Right now, I feel that those who pursue humanistic fields have a much better chance of staying authentic and irreplaceable. Meanwhile, all technical jobs are at high risk. If you are young and trying to choose a path, I highly recommend you to follow your actual passions. The old idea of choosing a technical career just because it is more remunerative and offers an economically safe path is rapidly fading. At the same time, we are stuck in a trap: if you refuse to use AI, you become incredibly slow compared to your competitors. It is almost impossible to work and compete today without using such a powerful tool.
My final reflection is this: as a society, where are we aiming to go? Is this really the future we are looking for? We are going toward a complete incapacity to think critically for ourselves, simply because there is already a tool that can do it faster and better. But if we delegate all our reasoning, problem-solving, and logic to a mathematical model, what is left for the human experience? If we surrender our capacity to think and retain only our capacity to feel, we regress. We return to the state of animals, driven only by emotion and instinct, while an artificial intelligence manages the complexities of our world.
We must not move our minds externally. I wish I could look at the horizon with optimism, but looking at the trajectory of our current path, I am wondering: are we building our future owners?