“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
— Henry Ford
I’ve been thinking about that quote a lot lately.
Not because it’s clever (though it is), but because it feels like a warning. A warning about where we are with AI, and where we might be heading.
Because if AI had existed back then, it wouldn’t have invented the car. It would’ve made faster horses. Lighter saddles. Optimised oats per mile.
It would’ve predicted the future, but it never would’ve imagined one.
And that’s what worries me. Not the tool itself, but what happens if we let the tool start thinking for us.
A Librarian With No Imagination
Let me say this up front: I’m not anti-AI.
I use ChatGPT. I ask it to bounce around ideas. It helps me understand concepts, understand things — not just as an iOS Software Engineer, but in lots of other areas. I love how it can unlock gaps in my knowledge.
But I’ve also worked in tech for two decades. I’ve built apps, mentored junior devs, shipped products, rewritten codebases, and learned a lot of things the hard way.
And I’ve learned this:
AI is a really fast librarian, but with no imagination.
It can retrieve anything that’s ever been written. But it can’t dream. It can’t rebel. It can’t wonder. And yet, I’m seeing a troubling shift.
Companies that once proudly invested in developing talent are now making cold decisions:
- Why train juniors when an AI tool can write code faster?
- Why spend time mentoring when automation looks cheaper?
It’s not just a workflow change, it’s a philosophical one.
We’re trading growth for margins. We’re optimising for profit, not potential.
When leading tech companies proclaim “AI writes 25% of all new code”, I’m not amazed, I’m concerned.
And that’s when I worry that we’re drifting into a future where it’s considered reasonable, even smart, to skip developing the next generation of thinkers.
A future where efficiency outweighs experience, and revenue beats learning. A future where thinking less becomes the cost of doing business.
But if we don’t invest in those just starting out… who replaces the senior/experienced people when they retire? Who gains the wisdom that only comes from years of trial and error? Who will be there to mentor, to architect, to lead?
You can’t promote experience if no one gets to have any.
A few years of cost-saving today could leave us with a future where we’ve optimised ourselves into a leadership vacuum, and no one remembers how the foundations were built.
History Didn’t Happen by Optimisation
The biggest leaps in human history, the moments that changed everything, didn’t come from optimising the past. They came from someone saying: “What if we did something completely different?” Or better yet, from someone noticing something unexpected and choosing to follow it.
Candles to Light Bulbs AI would’ve improved the wick. We invented electricity.
Horses to Cars AI would’ve made faster horses. We built engines.
Theatre to Cinema AI would’ve suggested better seating, louder actors. We created a new language of light, sound, and time.
Dumb Phones to iPhones AI would’ve added buttons. Steve Jobs took them all away.
Catapults to Rockets AI would’ve suggested better arcs. We left the planet.
Mould to Penicillin AI would’ve cleaned the lab. Alexander Fleming noticed something strange, and we got antibiotics.
Melted Chocolate to Microwaves AI would’ve fixed the magnetron. Percy Spencer’s snack melted, and we got a kitchen revolution.
Burrs to Velcro AI would’ve picked the seeds off the dog. George de Mestral saw their tiny hooks, and copied nature.
Failed Glue to Post-it Notes AI would’ve thrown away the weak adhesive. Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry saw the potential in imperfection, and changed how we work.
Shadows to X-rays AI would’ve dismissed the strange image. Wilhelm Röntgen saw his bones, and opened a window into the human body.
Realism to Abstract Art AI would have suggested more accurate portraits. Picasso deconstructed the human face. Kandinsky painted sound.
Classical to Jazz AI would have suggested tighter harmonies. We chose improvisation.
Traditional Poetry to Free Verse AI would’ve written more Shakespeare. Humans broke the rules and wrote from the soul.
Pong to Virtual Worlds AI would’ve suggested better ping speed. We built universes you could live in.
AI optimises. Humans leap.
But our leaps aren’t just technological. They’re emotional. Artistic. Philosophical. Human.
And sometimes, humans trip over something strange and decide to follow it.
That’s not data. That’s instinct. That’s curiosity. That’s the unpredictable, irrational brilliance of being human.
The Cost of Replacing Human Thought
I’ve seen what happens when someone gets the chance to learn by doing. I’ve mentored people who started unsure, nervous, questioning everything, and watched them become leaders, innovators, mentors themselves.
But you don’t get there by outsourcing growth.
You get there through trial, error, failure, frustration, and those glorious little breakthroughs where something finally clicks.
That process? That’s the engine of innovation.
If we replace it with autocomplete, and let AI take the reins, what happens when the next hard problem comes along?
Who will be there to solve it? Who will know how to solve it?
The Glass Cockpit and the Danger of Forgotten Experience
There’s a term from aviation that’s stuck with me for years: The Glass Cockpit.
Modern aircraft are highly automated. Pilots spend most of the flight monitoring systems. But when something goes wrong, when the autopilot hands control back in a moment of crisis, many pilots struggle.
Why?
Because they haven’t flown manually in years. They’ve lost the feel of flying.
They outsourced their instincts, and when the system failed, they weren’t ready.
That’s the future I worry we’re building. Not just in aviation. In everything.
A world where we look competent, until something unexpected happens. And then realise we’ve forgotten how to fly the plane.
We Don’t Need Replacements, We Need Partners
If you’ve ever watched Iron Man, you’ll remember JARVIS, Tony Stark’s AI assistant.
JARVIS didn’t make decisions for him. It didn’t invent the Iron Man suits on its own. It provided data, ran simulations, presented options — Tony decided what to do.
JARVIS was powerful because it augmented a human, not replaced one.
That’s what I believe AI should be. AI should be our JARVIS:
- Helping us move faster
- Surfacing insights we’d miss
- Running scenarios while we weigh the consequences
But never removing us from the process of choice!
Tony saved the world not because of JARVIS, but because he knew what mattered. That’s the model. That’s the future I believe in.
Final Thought
Let me be clear, I believe in technology. I have loved technology from a young age. I studied Computer Science at university. I have been amazed and inspired by its advances in the last 10, 20 years. I’m a software engineer through and through.
I believe technology is the only way we’ll truly evolve — to cure diseases, explore our galaxy, understand the fabric of reality, and build things we’ve only dreamed of.
But every great leap humanity has ever made began when someone dared to question the norm, when they challenged the limits of their time, ignored the safe path, and imagined something wildly better. They didn’t optimise. They didn’t look at the past and use it to predict the future. They rebelled with purpose. They looked at what was and asked, “What if there’s more?”
When Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens, we changed our view of the universe.
When Ada Lovelace imagined a machine composing music, she changed the future of computing.
When the Wright Brothers dared to believe flight was possible, we left the ground.
When Katherine Johnson did the maths to land Apollo 11, she aimed us at the Moon.
When artists abandoned realism, when poets broke structure, when musicians threw away the sheet, they didn’t just iterate. They re-imagined.
This is what makes us human. The urge to explore. To create. To feel. To understand. To leap!
So yes, let’s build AI. Let’s use it to amplify our thinking, enhance our creativity, accelerate discovery.
But let’s never forget that the future doesn’t belong to those who optimise the past. It belongs to those who imagine something better.
Because if this is how far we’ve come in just a few thousand years, imagine where we could go next.