From learning AI to building with it
- Systems & AI engineer
- Bergen, Norway
- Open to new work
Something shifted this past year. I went from studying AI to building with it — and I'll admit it's getting addictive.
Here's what surprised me. At the technical level, I'm still early. I know that. But that's not where the leverage turned out to be. The work I keep gravitating toward is systems thinking — turning a messy business problem into logic a machine can actually run. That's where I'm useful.
AI has made building easier than it has ever been. What it hasn't made easier is the reasoning behind how a system should work. That still needs a human in the loop — and a human in the loop only counts if that human is exercising judgment.
Everyone can use the tools now. Everyone can build. Which means the tools no longer decide the quality of the outcome. The human does.
There's a scene in I, Robot I keep coming back to. Detective Spooner dismisses the robot Sonny — no robot could write a symphony or turn a canvas into a masterpiece. Sonny answers with two words: “Can you?”
Maybe machines will create masterpieces one day. Maybe they won't. Either way, Sonny's answer points at something we keep missing: most of us were never the symphony writers. Our role was always judgment — deciding what's worth building, and recognizing quality when we see it.
That role didn't shrink when the tools got better.
It's the only part that grew.