The AI Dependency Trap: How Blind Automation Destroys Understanding
Relying on AI without understanding the codebase creates a vicious loop of fragile systems and broken workflows.
Returning to Feeling and the Awakening of Emotion
So much time since I was so angry, for something so stupid, yet that makes me different. Somehow, I just realize that I had not felt this for a lot of time now. Since I got rid of that little girl, I seem to be somehow just happier, more human.
God, how much time since I last got so mad. And I know that it is weird, right? Being mad and then being glad about that, but I am, because my emotions used to convey suffering, used to convey a deep, existential dread.
Now, I am able to care about stupidities, and it just feels beautiful.
The Ticking Clock and the Video Pipeline Crisis
Now, let us get into the story. (SPOILER: I HAVEN’T SOLVED IT YET)
The timeline is ticking, I have 2 hours to complete the 3 short form content videos I need to upload for my distribution channels before the algorithm resets and kills my daily streak, and thereby much of my reach. If I do not generate the videos now, I will lose 15 days in daily short form video posting.
Somehow, I had the idea of stripping my whole working and existing video generation pipeline to create a better one, so I spent around 10 hours researching, analyzing, writing in a notebook and speaking with Gemini to clarify concepts. It was like having the complete solutions for engineering the perfect short form content. From the audio, to the motion graphics, to the character and the script.
I found out the way to make them perfect to ensure exponential growth on these distribution channels. Growth, that would lead to growth in my income, profit and help me finally become financially independent.
Replacing Emotional Dependency with Artificial Intelligence
The pipeline, however, was no longer working. The files were messy and I understood NOTHING, because it was all AI generated. I was not even able to generate and edit files without AI, what a dependency.
Really, I get rid of emotion dependency and start one with AI, I need to learn to master myself.
So, I started anew. I created a new folder. But instead of manually understanding and planning the video generation pipeline, I went for the easy option: Ask AI.
It was the worst thing I could have done.
After 2 hours, 50% of my daily quota and all of my patience, I had a decently working pipeline with HORRIBLE TTS quality, and motion graphics that were, albeit visually ok, overly simplistic for the requirements I had made. Yesterday, I spent a lot of time writing scripts, content pillars and templates for the motion graphics. Yet, I no longer am in control of this. This is like a lost, broken experiment.
AI is horrible when you break something. Because you don’t actually understand anything in the codebase, and sometimes you realize that you broke it until some chats later, you cannot go back quickly.
The Mirage of Knowledge Without Control
What do I do then? I would love to give you all a sales pitch, and tell you that I have an AI app, that works by instructing AI, the one thing I was not able to do. The one thing that finished with my patience. But NO. I don’t have such product. I don’t have such abilities.
And to say that I spent 10+ hours researching about the videos, the motion graphics, the sound and everything. Moreover, I DO understand the motion graphics terms, the ease in-out, both, the functions. I even spent around an hour re-deriving cubic bezier functions from scratch.
What happened, then? I had all the knowledge, the computer to run the local ML, and the time. And even the AI. In spite of Gemini not being the best model, it works.
What then, do I have to do? Where did my biggest sin lie?
The Vicious Cycle of Copy-Pasting Unexamined Code
The problem was dumbly copy/pasting AI responses. No, it wasn’t copy/pasting AI responses. It IS copy/pasting AI responses. I still don’t understand any of the code, how to fix it, how to set it up.
Sounds stupid now, I must admit. I used to believe that it was such a waste of time learning all those things when AI can do it better, faster and cheaper. But, no. I did not understand a shit of this database, I wasn’t able to fix. And I am not able to set it back up.
I guess I will have to manually work, but how do I work on something I do not know. Most people would use the web version of the model, to which I have near infinite access. However, this would lead me to the same loop, the same Teufelskreis. I must finally escape it, it was very sad, very bad.
And it frankly just highlights how easily things break when you don’t understand nor know anything.
Escaping the Teufelskreis: Learning to Code and Master the Tool
I guess that I will have to draw my architecture on a sheet of paper, then just simplify it a little so that I can actually create the videos today, and read the README file of every repo on Github.
What I do have to do, will be that I will learn coding. I did not want to, I thought that it was STUPID learning it, because it is not an evergreen ability, and because in some years AI will completely replace it, there will be a moment, where this type of problems I have will simply no longer be possible because of the model’s ability.
I also need to develop a better way to prompt the AI model, not just telling it that what he did was utter SHIT and I need it fixed now. Perhaps, starting a notebook where I log everything I do in my computer, and everything that I want to do will help me. I mean not literally everything, that would stop me too much, but perhaps when I ask AI, when I publish an article, and when I do something like this.
Using AI seems to actually be an art, it seems as though this type of Teufelskreis stems from using a tool you don’t understand, with technology way beyond my comprehension. Not that I could not learn it, but that I thought it was obsolete.
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