“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” — Marshall McLuhan
“You would not BELIEVE what the computers can do now.” I’ve heard that phrase, in one form or another, for my entire adult life. Computers have been getting smarter (and smaller, and faster) since the very beginning.
Whenever I feel a sense of awe over today’s amazing technological advancements, I pull up a screenshot of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2.0:
I like to play back in my mind how I reacted when I first saw it on my IBM PC Clone. Today, it looks absolutely terrible—but back then, it blew me away. It was complicated. It was unforgiving. The owner’s manual was thick and formidable.
I fell in love with Flight Simulator because it was incredibly empowering. I was 13 years old. My parents thought it was ridiculous—it didn’t look like much of anything to them. The engine sounds were pretty basic (Sound Blaster hadn’t shown up yet, for me at least) and the graphics, well…look at them.
I loved it because it was really hard to fly a plane. It challenged me to understand it all. It was one of the first times technology presented me with a brutal learning curve.
The creators of Flight Simulator did everything they could to create an authentic experience. It wasn’t really a “game”—there was nothing to win. Flying JFK to LAX actually took 6 hours (unless you sped up the clock, but that was cheating). I did it once. Half my cockpit view was a green rectangle, the other half was blue. I told my parents to not touch my computer. We were at 35,000 feet. I thought the “view” was great.
“This isn’t about me. This is about you.“ — An Intel 286 computer from 1992
We talk a lot about computers as tools, or as entertainment, or as the reason civilization is falling. But we don’t often talk about how they help us build skills. I think that’s because the emphasis is on speed—faster social-media feedback loops, quicker outcomes, instant transactions. Amazon doesn’t want you to become a more “skilled” shopper; Google doesn’t expect you to become a more “skilled” searcher.
But computers have been helping us build skills and grow from the very beginning. Some video games are incredibly enriching. A huge part of playing Sid Meier’s Civilization is building skills—skills like “encouraging the people to develop pottery” and “building a granary.” Sure you may never use those skills in real life (unless you’re a city comptroller) but still, they’re skills.
The ultimate skill in computing is, of course, coding. If you’re willing and able to speak the language, the computer will shed all those layers of abstraction and welcome you in. “Let’s talk.” I taught myself to code later in my professional career because I wanted to understand that language, even though I rarely speak it these days.
But you don’t need to code to feel challenged by a computer. Just load up the totally free, completely open-source, and deeply baffling 3D animation program Blender and start from Lesson 1 (or watch a few YouTube tutorials). You’ll peer deep inside the computer and come back a changed and more powerful person.
The Concierge and the Carpenter
“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to use an AI prompt, and he eats the same fish sticks every day for the rest of his life.” – Rich Ziade
I view our relationship with technology as something of a power struggle. I refuse to submit to the awesome power of technology. I love it and I have built a career on it. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to give iOS 17.5 any sense of accomplishment.
As AI takes hold there is a common refrain: “It’s great, you just ask for the thing and you know…it does a pretty good job.”
This is not empowering. We’re having a hard enough time getting up, putting on pants, and going to work. I’m going to be frank: I love, love, love it when AI wrecks itself. I love the mistakes and disasters and all the sixteen-fingered synthetic supermodels. It’s so important to be reminded that the things we build are as flawed.
When the chatbot unfurls its answer before us, the tone is confident, bordering on condescending. “I got it. You just sit back and take it in.” Most of us have been training ourselves for this eventuality for years: Siri, how far away is Istanbul? Alexa, does Amazon have any neon-colored USB-C cables in stock? Cortana, what did you do to Chicago’s O’Hare airport? We ask questions and kick back—let the computer do the work. And like I said, Amazon, and Google, and Microsoft, and Apple are basically fine with this relationship.
And you know…for the occasional sports score, for the weather, for that quick fact, it’s fine. It’s even great for giving you some direction as you embark on research. But I firmly believe that output must not be the final deliverable—especially because with generative AI, there’s an excellent chance it got a few things wrong and lied to your face.
But more importantly, if we empower computers to deliver final output, we stop growing. We stop learning. We stop building skills. Every AI prompt response is the product of past knowledge ingested and reduced to a fine paste. That seemingly brilliant AI bot would have nothing to say if it wasn’t for us.
And look, whatever you believe about AGI, if the purpose of a technology isn’t to empower humans, then what is it? If it’s “okay” to feed people garbage knowledge invented by overheated NVidia GPUs in order to “save them time,” that’s a really cynical point of view on human beings.
AI (and frankly, any technology) shines when it empowers us and unlocks some other capability or possibility that we didn’t have before. There’s plenty of discussion around the dangers of AI. The robots will just keep learning and eventually turn their gaze towards us and cause real damage. I’m glad we’re thinking about it.
I also want us to think about how this new wave concierge technology can lull us into a state where we just won’t bother. Yes, AI screws up today, but it will keep getting better. Then what? Do we just live in the hotel and just call the concierge for everything?
And I’d like to propose a rule of scaling—something you can see with a lot of tech giants see their customers. As the number of customers increases, a company’s opinion of them goes down. A lot of “big AI” feels like this, to me: A “let them eat fish fingers” approach to keeping the customers gorged.
As we craft our narrative around AI for Aboard, we’ve moved away from Aboard as concierge. Solving real problems is hard. As we map out our story, we’ve opened up the platform and laid out all the parts. It’s a set of powerful tools. For that last leg of the race, we need you to pick them up and finish the job.
Maybe one day we’ll be sick of having users. But I think we’re a long way away from that. For right now we’re just really excited you’re here.