Role reversal. Damn. I knew about this idea around parenting (and especially childing). But the other day I was talking about the book “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” (by Peter Watts) and it struck me.
A key thing in the book is that humans are in some kind of cryogenic deep sleep that pauses their vitals so they can effectively live “forever” (as long as they are kept in this deep sleep). It’s like getting access to time traveling, but only forward.
Well, the protagonists are traveling through space in a spaceship which is governed by (you guessed?) an AI. And the AI only wakes up humans when there’s some important decision to make or something requires manual intervention by a human.
It’s a good book. If this sparked your curiosity go read it. Writing style is a bit dry to my taste, but overall the story is nice.
Anyway, role reversal between humans and AI. That’s what struck me recently. At first AI was clearly a tool that we, as humans, used conveniently. But, as their capabilities improve, we are using it more and for longer and more complex tasks. We trust it more.
At first we approved everything. Now we use “auto-approve” and are switching to a more passive position. We let the AI run, and then when it doesn’t know how to deal with something it asks for our input. Doesn’t this sound similar to “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” situation? It does!
Even better (or worse). I read this book on May 2026. This was five months ago. At the time I didn’t think about this at all. And now, it has already happened.
Who is helping who? Is AI helping us, or are we helping AI?
Ok, that was dramatic. Let me clarify: I am ok with it. I am not complaining, nor trying to change things. This is just some thought that crossed my mind and I felt like sharing about it.
🧠 THOUGHT #1: This is probably the longest junk entry I made. It might be even worth a post, but I’ve just published something so I didn’t want to overdo it. I might move it to a proper post later maybe.
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