Serguey Asael Shinder – IT Professional

When I first got powerful AI tools, I had to figure out where they fit, and I got it wrong before I got it right. For a little while I let the model creep into decisions — not just doing work, but effectively choosing what the work should be. And the results drifted, because I’d handed over the one thing I shouldn’t have.

So I drew a line, and it’s made all the difference. On one side is the task: the boilerplate, the tedious transform, the first rough draft, the lookup I don’t want to do by hand. All of that goes to the machine, gladly. It’s fast, tireless, and genuinely good at it, and offloading it frees me for better things.

On the other side is the judgment. What we should build. What “right” means for these users. What to ship and what to quietly kill. That stays with me, always. Not because the model can’t produce an opinion — it can produce ten — but because owning the decision is the actual job. The moment I let the thing that types become the thing that decides, I’ve stopped being the engineer and started being a very fast typist’s assistant.

The reframe I settled on is simple: the model is a brilliant pair of hands, not a replacement for knowing what should be done. Give it the task. Keep the judgment. When I hold that line, the tools make me dramatically more effective. When I let it blur, the work slowly stops being mine in the ways that matter.

Automate the boring. Own the deciding. That boundary is where using AI well actually lives.

– Serguey Asael Shinder