AI and Real Work

Since China's DeepSeek AI has entered into the market, Indians have started making jokes about the Indian startup ecosystem. US is making OpenAI, China is making DeepSeek, and India is busy with 10-minute delivery apps and food deliveries. But what is real work - are these innovations not real work? If we look closely, making groceries accessible at your doorstep in 10 minutes is a complex logistical feat - think thousands of micro-decisions, dark stores strategically placed across cities, real-time tracking of items, and sophisticated route optimization through chaotic traffic. In India's densely populated cities with their undefined addresses and narrow lanes, achieving this kind of speed and reliability at scale is truly innovative and deserves genuine respect rather than dismissive trolling - it's transforming how millions access everyday essentials.

For sure, AI has changed a lot in recent years, transforming how we see technology and innovations today. With LLM and AGI innovations, we're waiting to see how many human tasks can be done and replaced by AI. Google was good to search and gave options to choose whatever your preference (I'm making a broad generalization here - we'll delve into specifics later) but AI is doing everything for you - just ask the question. It's like having a professor sitting in front of you who is never gonna judge you no matter how dumb and silly questions you ask. It encourages you, says sorry when making a mistake, and appreciates you if you correct it. This is very different from manually opening a bunch of links and analyzing and reading on your own & AI has done lot more than this.

But human suffering is much more than surfing on the internet and finding answers - few things can be naturally hard to live our lives with, yes I'm talking about the health crises, disabled body parts that making it hard to live life. The medical field has seen particularly exciting developments. AI-powered prosthetics are giving new mobility to amputees, with neural networks interpreting nerve signals to enable more natural movement. While cost remains a barrier, these devices are already changing lives. In healthcare more broadly, AI is accelerating drug discovery, improving cancer detection rates, and enhancing surgical precision.

Every work has value and these are actual real contributions that help us live easier lives rather than unnecessarily spending our time and energy on tasks that can be handled by innovations and technologies. But some work can be counted as especially rewarding - innovations that directly reduce human suffering and pain. That's the real meaning of work: your efforts should directly contribute to reducing human suffering, even if just by 1%, and make life better.