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Should you use AI for a task? Here's a simple way to decide

⁠The best way I’ve found to explain the dilemma comes from the AI researcher Daniel Meissler: it’s the difference between work and the gym.⁠⁠

⁠⁠At work, if your job is to move a bunch of heavy things from one side of the room to another, you should use whatever assistive tech you have on hand: a wagon, a forklift… even an AI-powered robot. But at the gym, it makes no sense for that robot to lift weights for you. The point of weightlifting isn’t to move heavy things across the room; it’s to actually lift those heavy things.⁠⁠

⁠⁠The same analysis holds for any task an AI can do for you. If it’s work–if the task has to be done and no one cares how–then it’s fine to use AI assistance. But if the task is more like the gym, and how the task is done is at least as important, then it probably doesn’t make sense to use AI.

I like the metaphor or a wagon or a forklift because they don’t do the job for you. They still require a lot of work on your part. That is my experience using AI. It’s a huge help, speeds the process and helps me do things I would not have done on my own. But it doesn’t do the job for me and it still requires a lot of work.

I don’t use AI to write posts here because what I do here is a “gym” task, not a “job” task.

2026-08-01