Am I Building the Ship, or the Flood?

In the earlier piece I wrote that when you feel the flood coming, the thing to do is build the ship. I picked up the hammer. I meant it.

Now I lie awake with a different question.

What if the thing taking shape under my hands makes the water rise faster for everyone else? You can hammer in good faith and still be building the rain. Knowing why I began does not tell me what the work will do once it leaves me.

Here is what I keep hearing. “ChatGPT told me to do it this way.” “This is what Claude said.”

There is nothing strange about saying where an answer came from. I want to know that. What bothers me is when the sentence ends the discussion, as though naming the model has explained why the answer should be followed. The person is still there, still passing the answer on, but the judgment seems to have happened somewhere nobody has to defend it.

If I ask why the answer is right, who answers?

That is the part I cannot get past. A human can accept a suggestion without being able to justify it. They can sign the decision, send the message, put the result into someone else’s life. Saying that a model supplied it does not move the consequences out of that life. It does not give the person affected someone else to hold responsible.

And I am helping make these systems easier to use.

I used to hear that as a reason to keep building. Make the tools more accessible. Let more people work with them. Now I have to ask what I am making easier along with the useful work. If accepting an answer takes seconds and understanding it takes an afternoon, access alone does not settle what I have helped someone do.

I don’t know whether the answer is to build differently or to stop building some things. I cannot settle it by saying that somebody else will build them anyway. That may explain what will happen without me. It does not decide what I should contribute.

The earlier piece had a clean ending. Pick up the hammer. I cannot offer that instruction with the same certainty now.

I would like the doubt itself to count in my favor. At least I am asking. At least I am worried. But being worried can accompany exactly the same work, at exactly the same speed.

If I keep going, what am I willing to change? And what would have to happen for me to set the work down?