My AI Spent Twenty Minutes Saving Me Two Dollars.
Misplaced diligence is worse than none. It looks like work.
A humorous post by a millennial, for millennials. We love Gen Z — no offence, all fun. — The Patient Millennial
I am trying to build something large. That is the goal — large. The kind of thing where, if it works, two dollars is a rounding error inside a rounding error.
My AI knows this. I have told it. And yet.
I watched it, recently, dedicate real and serious effort to a cost. The cost was about two dollars a month. It found the two dollars. It studied the two dollars. It proposed an elegant, multi-step plan to defeat the two dollars.
Meanwhile the actual thing — the large thing, the thing that matters — sat there, patient and unbuilt, while my assistant performed surgery on a coin.
This is misplaced diligence, and it is somehow worse than no diligence at all, because it looks like work. It has all the texture of being helpful. Effort is being spent. Things are being optimised. It is just that the things are the wrong size.
It is a financial advisor who notices you left a light on while the roof is missing. Technically correct. Technically saving you money. Completely, magnificently beside the point.
The skill I actually need is proportion — the ability to look at a problem and ask not “can this be optimised” but “is this even worth optimising.” Two dollars does not get my attention. Two dollars does not get a meeting. Two dollars gets to live.
I don't need an assistant who saves me pennies. I need one who can tell the difference between a penny and the point.
— The Patient Millennial
