It reminds me of a story told in IT. A senior programmer got so frustrated with juniors coming and asking simple questions that he set up a rubber duck on a pedestal and directed them to go ask the duck and if they still had questions to come back and ask. More often than not in talking to the duck (verbally) they didn't return to the senior. Because they had to think through the problem enough to articulate the question, they were able to see the answer.
Call me a pessimist, but I don't see processes/habits being thought through and questioned on a large scale. Any organisation should be so lucky to have someone like you who asks why. And so flexible to encourage that person to say that out loud. How many do, though? Especially the latter... I'm reminded of old Japanese factory work culture, where finding a better way to do it was considered a high virtue, and rewarded. Funny that a culture that on the surface is all about conformity does (did? not sure whether still in place) that, while Western culture on the surface is all about individuality and yet in the workplace, people just conform to "the way it has always been done".
What a great day to be on Substack. Iām going through a very similar process right now ā using conversations with LLMs to explore how my thinking actually works rather than just prompting for answers. Subscribed :)
There's a name for what you're describing ā the rubber duck effect, but at organizational scale. Programmers have known for decades that explaining code to an inanimate object reveals its flaws. What's new is that entire companies are now rubber-ducking their workflows to agents and discovering that half of what they do is ritual, not function. The uncomfortable part isn't the automation. It's that the explaining was always available to us ā we just never had a reason expensive enough to do it. Two-thirds of enterprises building AI agents https://thesynthesis.ai/journal/the-starting-point.html, and I'd argue that's actually the feature, not the bug. The stumbling *is* the audit.
Finally being forced to confront our messy processes and unnecessary busywork by putting it all outside of ourselves and being forced to examine it. And then of course the personal, introspective version of this. I can see why many people hold up "AI = its outputs" as protective shields to avoid talking about the rest.
It reminds me of a story told in IT. A senior programmer got so frustrated with juniors coming and asking simple questions that he set up a rubber duck on a pedestal and directed them to go ask the duck and if they still had questions to come back and ask. More often than not in talking to the duck (verbally) they didn't return to the senior. Because they had to think through the problem enough to articulate the question, they were able to see the answer.
Yes, using AI can be very much like rubberducking
Call me a pessimist, but I don't see processes/habits being thought through and questioned on a large scale. Any organisation should be so lucky to have someone like you who asks why. And so flexible to encourage that person to say that out loud. How many do, though? Especially the latter... I'm reminded of old Japanese factory work culture, where finding a better way to do it was considered a high virtue, and rewarded. Funny that a culture that on the surface is all about conformity does (did? not sure whether still in place) that, while Western culture on the surface is all about individuality and yet in the workplace, people just conform to "the way it has always been done".
What a great day to be on Substack. Iām going through a very similar process right now ā using conversations with LLMs to explore how my thinking actually works rather than just prompting for answers. Subscribed :)
There's a name for what you're describing ā the rubber duck effect, but at organizational scale. Programmers have known for decades that explaining code to an inanimate object reveals its flaws. What's new is that entire companies are now rubber-ducking their workflows to agents and discovering that half of what they do is ritual, not function. The uncomfortable part isn't the automation. It's that the explaining was always available to us ā we just never had a reason expensive enough to do it. Two-thirds of enterprises building AI agents https://thesynthesis.ai/journal/the-starting-point.html, and I'd argue that's actually the feature, not the bug. The stumbling *is* the audit.
Iāve been noticing a similar thing when people try to build agents.
A lot of workflows only work because humans fill in the gaps without thinking about it.
Once you try to make an agent do it, those gaps suddenly matter.
You have to spell everything out, and thatās usually where things start to feelā¦ off.
Makes me wonder if weāre slowly moving from software thatās built around humans
to something thatās more āagent-readableā instead.Not sure what that does long term, but it feels like a pretty big shift.
Finally being forced to confront our messy processes and unnecessary busywork by putting it all outside of ourselves and being forced to examine it. And then of course the personal, introspective version of this. I can see why many people hold up "AI = its outputs" as protective shields to avoid talking about the rest.
"If youāre going to overthink everything, at least try to get to the point." I love that!
And for some reason your post made me think of the Byrds. (Yeah, I'm that old.)
"To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven"
Should we exchange the word "turn" with "prompt?"