Shoveling, Reading, Writing, Drawing: These Are What Make More of Me

Image by author, with the help of coffee

First, I know nothing about AI. If you truly have no idea how it’s constructed, I know a bit more than you do. This is only because I took a few coding classes back in the day, but mostly because, for my birthday one year, I asked one of my sons for a walk in the woods so he could explain machine learning and AI to me. That’s the extent of my expertise — a 90-minute woodland workshop on AI.

Second, big news, we got snow. Nothing too fancy. No double-digit meteorological swagger. But we got enough that I needed to shovel the walkway to my front door, and a path down my driveway. I heard more than once from friends that I should let my sons or my husband do this work. This is just like when people think I shouldn’t carry the 5-gallon water jugs from my car to the house, or that I shouldn’t lift bags of mulch.

Why shouldn’t I do these things? If I don’t do them, or if I’m not a regular at my gym, then I will waste away — weaken, slow, have lesser health metrics. If I don’t use my body, then I will lose the use of it.

For example, I used to occupy a body that could run 50 miles on the spur of the moment. “Hey, Steph,” my running buddy said to me once, “You want to run that 50-mile race with me this weekend?” I shrugged and said, “Sure.” We did it. We had fun.

I’m not bragging, I promise. It’s like you telling me offhandedly that you know how to place a stent in a heart, or how to bake baklava blindfolded, or what string theory is. It’s just a part of you, while to me it’s something I can’t imagine.

These days, thanks to a trampoline accident, I couldn’t run a mile if you paid me. I can lift far less weight than I once did. What I lost in physical ability, I gained in writing ability. I traded one for the other. I say that I have a writer’s body now. (You’re supposed to laugh there.)

What I’m trying to show you is how far I’ve fallen. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Or, in terms of the writing, if you use it, you build it.

This brings me back to AI. The musculoskeletal system isn’t the only thing that needs to be used. The brain does, too. If you don’t use it for creative or critical thinking, if you don’t ask it to remember things, it won’t, because how could it? If you’re offloading those tasks to something else, then your brain will shrink the scope of what it can do. It will forget some or all of what it knows about how to do those tasks. You’ll have to give it a refresher or even relearn what you used to know. Cognition likes to do reps the same way your biceps do.

I’m not saying AI is only a bad thing for the brain. You can use the tool to think even bigger and broader than you did before, but you’ll have to intentionally use it that way. Whatever you’re offloading to AI should open the door to new critical thinking tasks for the brain. If you don’t open that door, you’ll become a cognitive couch potato. And then, yes, AI would be bad for the brain.

We can always start using our brains and bodies again to grow and build back what shrank, which is the good news, but we must do it and not say we’ll do it and put it off. If we get used to how fast AI does our work for us while we cozy down and take a mental nap, we’ll become adept at napping.

If you don’t use it, you lose it.

One of my sons explained to me the other day how their work team now uses AI to write some of their code. I asked if he was concerned about this development. He said no because what it opened for the team was much higher-level thinking and deeper development on their project. I asked if knowing how to code was the only way they could adopt this strategy. He said, “Obviously.” AI was creating the beams, concrete, and rebar. They were building the house. They’d need to know when a beam is needed and when concrete is. They’d need to know what a beam is.

We’ve been using tools since, the last I heard, 3+ million years ago. Today, I don’t use the AI summary. I go to the sources and read them. I read the NIH study. I read the expert opinion on a particular topic. The algorithmic search engine is my librarian. It doesn’t replace reading the material, making critical decisions as I read, and logging the knowledge into memory. AI can’t put that into my brain. Only I can.

I’m not one to opine on artificial intelligence. If I did, then my best advice would be not to listen. Or say, “Hey, Steph, how about those [insert favorite football team]?”

Yet, I do have an interest in how we think and learn, how we behave and make decisions. That’s been my side hobby for a little while now, thanks to my coaching. Again, no expert am I, but I know enough to know that whatever the body does, it grows, and what it doesn’t do, it shrinks.

There’s no right answer to any of this. Running far isn’t the end-all, be-all. Writing your own essay isn’t either. But being able to use our bodies in effective ways is what makes life better. Learning is, to my estimation, the key to so many positive things. It helps us to become better humans. The more we know and the more effectively we can think, the finer our life experience is.

Knowing high-end math is effective, and so is mindfulness training, culinary artistry, and musical dexterity. You can add emotional regulation skills to that list, linguistic expertise, surgical capability, and botanical knowledge. I’d throw in geospatial skills, data parsing, dentistry, knitting, astrophysics literacy, attentive parenting, client-facing wisdom, and welding capability. You can add anything under the sun. Whatever we do to propel our knowledge and skill makes our brains smarter, our bodies more capable, and our lives richer.

I want to shovel the driveway, write my essays, and draw my own cartoons. I want to read expert sources and internalize the learning, rather than peek at a summary and think that’s the end of it. Yes, sometimes I’ll use a leaf blower instead of a rake, but I’ll lay my own mulch instead of hiring my wonderful yard guy.

And all of this reminds me. I need to get over to the gym. I have biceps to build. Maybe I’ll see you there?

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Have a nice rest of your week, friends.