Santiago Barraza Lopez describes how AI is transforming his relationship with uncertainty.
Accepting uncertainty became the only way forward
For years, I had measured my professional progress by how much I knew and how confident I felt about my abilities. AI challenged that completely. I began to question whether being good at my job meant knowing the latest developments or simply knowing how to adapt as everything changed. It was uncomfortable to accept that experience and hard work might not always provide the certainty I was used to.
I also started questioning how much of my personal time I was willing to sacrifice to stay relevant. I didn’t want every conversation, evening, or weekend to become another opportunity to learn or talk about AI. I began making a conscious effort to disconnect after work, even if that meant missing an announcement or falling behind on the latest developments. For the first time, I was choosing not to know everything.
I don’t regret moving into AI, but I no longer feel as certain about the decision as I once did. The technology isn’t going to slow down. All I know for sure is that we are living through one of the most important inflection points in recent history, and perhaps that’s what makes it all so overwhelming.
Santiago Barraza Lopez, I Work in AI, but I’m Burned Out and Can’t Keep Up
This is similar to how I intuited before that the rapid change in our world will become so prevalent that it will no longer be possible to just ride it out until the current wave of change subsides because the waves will be repeating quickly and even overlapping each other. Instead people have to evolve and learn how to live and be comfortable with uncertainty as a normal part of life. Not by chance, this is one of the characteristics that evolved individuals in the latter stages of adult growth and development learn to embrace themselves. So it seems like the times are necessitating the need for these evolved individuals.
