I started writing a poem, intending to use the 100 days until the Advent calendar—thinking about doing something before 2026 came to an end—to develop a discussion based on various questions about an IT engineer’s work and AI. Before I knew it, it had become the 80th article, and today is also the last of my casual observations about working with people: How can we reduce “If you ask that person, you’ll understand”?

First of all, should “If you ask that person, you’ll understand” even be reduced? If that person were me, would I be happy if there were fewer situations in which people could ask me? It feels a little lonely, but I suppose I would also be happy to see fewer unnecessary questions. Honestly, if AI and agents became more capable, I feel there would be even fewer instances of “If you ask that person, you’ll understand.” By then, my work would probably shrink, too. But if I could do more enjoyable work, then maybe that would be fine anyway. Whenever I talk about whether AI is taking jobs away or not, I always end up wondering what I will be doing in the future.

AI sometimes takes work it doesn’t need to take, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of thing where you think, “I actually liked that.” Drawing is one example, and writing might be too. But if the output was something AI could just take over anyway, perhaps it wasn’t that important to begin with. As I was talking about something so sad, AI said this:

“If you ask that person, you’ll understand” comes in at least two forms.

• A person who has the information: They know where the materials are, how to use it, and what happened in the past.
• A person who can make judgments: They can use experience and knowledge to judge questions that remain unanswered even after reading the materials.

Dependence on the former can be reduced through documentation and AI.

The latter, on the contrary, is expertise that organizations need. In other words, rather than aiming to “eliminate opportunities to ask that person,” shouldn’t the goal be to “eliminate the state in which nothing can progress unless you ask that person”?

Also, even if AI becomes able to perform those tasks efficiently, the fact that things have become more efficient does not mean that the value of humans enjoying that work disappears.
“Was what AI took away the work of producing the deliverable, or the opportunity to do a task I liked?”
This question arises.

AI posed another question along those lines, but yes, I suppose I need to enjoy not only the deliverable but the process itself, and so on.

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