The augmented human

At 6:52 AM, my alarm rings. My phone app uses artificial intelligence to calculate the perfect moment to wake me using movement and data aggregated and analyzed on my sleep patterns.

I get up, shower, and hop on my bike. My podcast app recommends a number of episodes based on my listening history. I pick one focused on ransomware, which comes up at work later. Nice choice. I need to pick up some groceries while I’m out on my morning bike ride. I input “Nearby grocery store” and google maps points me to one that is open at this early hour.

I return one hour later, and sit down for work. Cortana reminds me of various chats I’ve had with my coworkers in the previous week and offers me some options to schedule meetings and set reminders. Lastly, it recommends I block some time in my day to focus on my work. Good idea.

I read the rest of my emails and open up VS Code. Before I start up coding, I open spotify and hit play on one the personalized playlists. Grunge, great. A simple task today, just some API implementation. As I start typing my code, GitHub Copilot starts filling things in for me. I don’t even have to resort to stackoverflow for some issues, copilot added the right snippets of code. I run my tests and check for security issues, and then I step out for lunch, repeating the morning process.

I return to my work and check my personal email. Nothing important, gmail already sorted out the emails so I can focus only on what’s a priority. I write some documentation based on my earlier work, with Word autocomplete filling things in and fixing my grammar. After one last meeting, I am done with work.

I hop on voice chat with a friend to record our podcast. The issue is, we haven’t prepared for it and we don’t have a topic. I take the synopsis of a previous episode and paste it in GPT3, and it generates a few new ideas and talking points. We pick one and roll with it.

After everything is all said and done, it’s time to relax. It’s the steam summer sales and I haven’t bought a new game in a while. I open up the steam recommendation engine and tweak it for an old and niche game based on my purchase history. It recommends me E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy, and I have a lot of fun with it.

My phone pings me that it’s time for me to get into bed. Based on previous history, it takes me about 30 minutes to fall asleep, so it uses that as a buffer. I lay down and open my kindle. Amazon recommended a new book on startups. A great read.

Before I drift off to sleep, I stop and think for a moment. With the power of AI in all those applications and software I use, I have achieved way more than I normally would’ve and discovered new things that I might have completely missed otherwise. But at the same time, I was more of a caretaker and guide for the various AI systems that did the brunt of the work. Am I less of a human being for that, or more?