The Summer season is a time of regular and proactive gardening in our family. From planting and light pruning to regular feeding and watering, the garden takes centre stage in our Summer activities. We have an automated irrigation system throughout which, with minimal maintenance, ensures our garden is regularly watered. Watering done. No sweat.
At least that’s the promise of irrigation. There is, however, a key detail missing which only watering by hand can address.
Watering by hand ensures that plants get a deep drink during the blazing Summer sun. Even irrigating daily isn’t enough to offer a deep drink. Hand watering does also, however, involve time, physical effort, an amount of concentration and attention, and the conscious decision to stop what one is doing and to divert attention to hand-held watering.
There is something to this, though. Watering by hand offers a space for mental rest. A space for lovingly tending to something one claims to love and which one definitely benefits from. The evidence of this is clear in the blossoming of flowers, the accelerated leaf growth, and the freshness in the air as the plants wake up and give off their aroma.
During one of my daily hand watering sessions, I came to the comparison between the irrigation and hand watering combination, and the AI and human-driven work environment. There is a lot of talk about AI eating the workforce. In truth, though, AI (in it’s current state, anyhow) is prone to hallucinate, and to be overly confident when it is blatantly incorrect. I’ve had several examples of this in recent days alone, and am not the only one.
No matter how much AI we inject into the workforce, there will always be space for human workers, much like there will always be space for hand watering and in both cases, space for the benefits each approach has to offer.