Woodworking
When I am not building things with AI, I like building things with wood. Over the last few years, I have built many things including raised planter boxes, a bookcase, a dresser, and upper cabinets. For all of these projects, I used power tools based on my goal of making things that fit our needs and our space. I probably could have built all of these things using hand tools but each project would have taken much longer and I would have been able to complete fewer projects. Would the completed projects have been better? Probably not – I am not that good of a woodworker. At least not compared to this guy:
It is amazing to watch the skill with which this cooper works. The way that he meticulously shapes each board shows years of practice and an immense level of mastery. However beautiful the craftsmanship, producing barrels in this manner does not scale to society’s demands for barrels. Modern coopers utilize power tools and automation, enabling them to produce far more barrels in a week:
These modern coopers do not automate everything – they are deeply involved in the process (although the level of automation varies between cooperages). Part of running a successful cooperage is in understanding when and how to leverage automation. This automation does not necessarily degrade the quality of the barrels that they produce – in some cases it enhances it. Automation allows the coopers to focus on higher-level tasks, like exactly how to char the barrels. This also leads to more consistency to the downstream consumers (i.e., distilleries) that can better tune their processes based on an expected level of quality.
What does this have to do with AI?
Software is going through a similar transformation. From a “craft” produced by a limited number of experts to mass-production. Automation will enable developers to produce far more code than ever before. Some of this code will be “slop” – hastily thrown together code with no attention to quality but I am excited to see what software will look like when we figure out what parts to automate and what parts are best left to the experts.