On airplanes, boats, bikes and AI
Lately I’ve been thinking about airplanes.
Not because I like them. Quite the opposite. However, in a few weeks, I’ll be taking my first long overseas flight with my toddler and my husband. Our first 12+ hour journey as a family. I already know it will be uncomfortable, sleepless and stressful. Yet even with all the misery, I can only imagine that it is nothing compared to a two-week ocean crossing on a ship, with storms, seasickness, endless horizon, and no escape.
This improvement (to be able to fly overseas) makes me think of what we leave behind when we embrace technology (oftentimes for the better, but not always).
Traveling by ship turns the journey into part of the story. It’s as if the longer it takes, the deeper it gets carved into the experience. Traveling by plane (especially a long flight), is an annoyance you endure so you can forget it. The plane shrinks the world, but it also compresses the experience. You arrive faster, but you remember less.
This metaphor has me thinking about writing, and how thinking itself has changed.
There is a kind of slow, ocean-like writing: sitting with ideas, wrestling with them, shaping sentences word by word. Letting go of ideas you are not ready, or experienced enough to develop. Sailing with the weather in mind. It is harder. It forces you to confront the bad ideas, cut them, rewrite them, start again. You often get lost, or stuck at sea, but, if you are lucky, the detour becomes part of the discovery.
Then there is the fast, airplane writing. You get where you want to go quickly, and the destination is clearer. You lose fewer ideas mid-journey. You can ask sharper questions, explore more terrain, and spend less time in turbulence. Large Language Models feel like that. Faster thinking, lighter effort, and a smoother arrival.
So, which one is better?
I don’t know. Maybe neither. Maybe both. Maybe the answer depends on why you’re traveling in the first place.
On bicycles
Speaking of travel. This metaphor followed me into a very real journey I had recently on my bike.
That day was a really good day. My thesis finally got approved. I was finally recovering from being sick, and saw was my daughter . I had a sequence of great meetings and inspiring conversations at the office. Literally, the autumn sun was finally shining after weeks of clouds and cold. Life felt aligned.
My journey back home requires that I take a bus, two trains and a 30 minute bike ride with my e-bike. It's quite the process. As I arrived at the end station and walked to the bicycle parking place, when I noticed that something looked off with my bike. It took my brain a full minute to understand what I was seeing. My e-bike was still there, but the battery was gone.
I called my husband, did the mental math, and decided to cycle home anyway. Without the battery, my bike weighs approximately the same as a small meteorite, and the road home has unexpected hills I had forgotten existed.
Within minutes, the sunshine in my head turned to clouds.
Sweat. Exhaustion. Anger. Absolute, uncontainable frustration.
Why does life always waits until I’m finally okay to throw something bad at me?
That’s when I caught myself. Maybe the world wasn’t suddenly terrible. Maybe I was choosing to feed the wrong wolf.
You know the story: the two wolves inside us: one made of fear, pain, bitterness; the other of hope, joy, resilience. The one that wins is the one we feed. And right there, on a painfully heavy bicycle with no battery, lungs burning because I’m still sick, hair flying in the wind like a dramatic movie heroine who did not ask for this scene…I had to decide:
Feed the dark wolf, or the bright one? And honestly, the dark wolf looked much hungrier. So, I tried (I really tried) to feed the brighter wolf. I focused on the good day, on the future I was excited about, on the fact that I was still capable of moving forward, even slowly.
Maybe AI is the battery
Somewhere along the way, while pedaling uphill on this ridiculously heavy bike, I went back to my airplane and ship metaphor for using AI.
With the battery, I never notice the hills. When the battery is there, I go faster, smoother, with much less effort. But today, without the battery, every slope returned, and just by comparison felt much steeper than usual.
It made me wonder: If AI is the battery, am I forgetting how heavy cycling actually is?
When I rely too much on the “motor” of technology, I forget how hard it is to get to where I want to go. And then, suddenly, when the battery is gone, or unavailable, or we choose not to use it…
The hill becomes enormous. It feels nearly impossible, and I don’t have anymore the patience it takes to get there at normal (non-battery-enhanced) speed.
I might not make it. I might need to get off and push.
Beauty and exhaustion
But something else happened too.
Without the battery, without the speed, and in my effort to feed the bright wolf, I started focusing on the experience itself. The orange and yellow of trees left and right. The crunch of autumn leaves. Birds chirping through the wind. Even my own agitated breath. Loud, imperfect, human.
It was annoying, exhausting, and somewhat beautiful.
And maybe that is the point.
“Maybe the real skill (whether in travel, writing, or life) is learning when to use the battery, and when to feel the weight of the bike beneath you. When to cruise, when to fly and when to take the slow road and let the journey shape you.
If technology is not the enemy and struggle is not a virtue, then the most important skill I am yet to develop must be discernment. The ability to know which tool belongs to which moment.”
