AI Didn’t Make Me Care Less About the Product
Some people stop when something has been created. I keep going until it is useful. You can call that a lot of things. Disconnected is a stretch.
I saw someone talking about AI creating “cognitive debt” and making people less connected to the products they build.
I laughed. Then I looked back at the thing I had already revised six times because something about the experience still bothered me.
If you know anything about me, you know you would have to pry my cold, very much living hands off my laptop keyboard to get me to stop caring about a product. Suggesting that I suddenly lost that connection because AI helped me build it is a pretty ridiculous assumption.
Quite honestly, AI has made my work better. I can get an idea in front of me sooner, see where it falls apart, and spend more time improving it. Something that might have stayed in a document can become something I can actually use, question, and refine.
What happens after that first version depends a lot on the person driving it.
Some product managers get a Jira ticket written and consider the thinking finished. The description looks good. There are acceptance criteria. It is assigned to someone. On to the next thing.
Others generate a small app, click through the happy path, and decide they have a product because the buttons work and the dashboard looks nice.
I can understand the concern there. When someone accepts an output without understanding the decisions inside it, they leave themselves with questions they cannot answer. Why does the workflow behave that way? What happens when the data is wrong? Why does the user need to complete this step? What happens when something fails?
If your answer to all of that is “that’s what the AI built,” you have some work to do.
But that is a very different experience from how I use it.
The first version gives me something to react to. I use it and realize a step is unnecessary. I rewrite a label because it makes sense to me but probably means nothing to the person seeing it for the first time. I notice that the information someone needs to make a decision is buried three clicks away. I go back and change it.
Then I try it again.
Sometimes, halfway through, I realize I solved the wrong part of the problem. Having something concrete makes that easier to see. I can change direction while the idea is still taking shape instead of defending a document I spent days polishing.
That process takes attention. It takes judgment. And it requires enough connection to the work to recognize when something technically functions but still feels frustrating to use.
AI has even changed what I think about in the shower. I used to stand there stressing about everything I didn’t get done that day. Now I’m trying to figure out how to iterate on the nine billion ideas in my head to make what I already built even better. Could that flow be easier? Does that feature actually help? What if I approached the whole thing differently?
Apparently, this is what being “disconnected from the product” looks like. Someone should tell my brain, because I would love to finish washing my hair.
I am not going to pretend every extra iteration makes a product better, either. At some point, you have to put it in front of people. My attachment to a feature does not mean anyone needs it. Part of owning the product is being willing to change something I liked when the people using it show me why it does not work.
That responsibility stays with me, regardless of how the first version was created.
And yes, I understand why people are skeptical. Some people absolutely use AI to skate by. They learn the vocabulary, produce something convincing, and move on before anyone asks too many questions. They want the appearance of ownership with very little of the follow-through.
Those people existed before AI. A polished slide deck, a full backlog, and a calendar packed with meetings could also make someone look productive without telling you much about what they actually improved.
AI gives that behavior another outlet. It also gives someone who cares a way to work through more ideas, catch more problems, and get further than they could before.
So when we talk about people losing their connection to the work, I want to know what they actually do after the output appears. Do they question it? Can they explain it? Do they watch someone use it? Do they take responsibility when it fails?
Those answers tell me far more than whether they used AI.
Some people stop when something has been created. I keep going until it is useful, and then I pay attention to what needs to get better.
You can call that a lot of things. Disconnected is a stretch.