{"slug": "ai-surgeon-s-assistant-or-commodity-on-a-meter", "title": "AI: Surgeon's Assistant or Commodity on a Meter?", "summary": "AI-assisted coding is compared to a surgeon's assistant, but the author argues that current LLMs like Claude lack the reliability and learning processes of human assistants, producing a stream of 'internet consciousness' rather than true intelligence. Sam Altman's vision of AI as a utility is reframed as a commodity that requires human-built processes to be useful.", "body_md": "V. Grishchenko\n\nThere has been many metaphors proposed for AI assisted coding.\nFor example, Geoffrey Litt suggested [\"code like a surgeon\"](https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/10/24/code-like-a-surgeon)\nmetaphor: your are the surgeon, LLM is your assistant. Delegate\nthe grunt work to AI, do what matters.\n\nWhen I sit down for a work session, I want to feel like a surgeon walking into a prepped operating room. Everything is ready for me to do what I’m good at.\n\nI had a surgery once, so I get it. I remember how rudely a\nsurgeon reprimanded his assistant for a minor mishap that could\nhave **potentially** caused a medical error. Nice to hear when it\nis your flesh on the table. The assistant, I believe, have\ninternalized that and likely does surgeries by now. Meanwhile,\nI reprimand Claude virtually every day and I am not sure if it\nhelps at all. What Claude does well is reproducing a stream of\n\"internet conciousness\", its effective training set.\n\nThe other thing I noticed in the operating room is the formal\n**process**. Paid by countless lives, a process that allows to\nminimize the preventable negative outcomes. The process of\norganizational and cultural **learning**. The surgeon re-read my\npapers before entering the room. A day before there was a\nmedical **concillium** where my case was seen by several doctors.\nA surgeon sees many patients. Cases are somewhat similar cause\nmodern surgeons are highly specialized. Still, he remembered\nthat the surgery is on the right, while a chair was set on the\nleft. An assistant got that well-deserved kick in the butt, so\nto say. Can we trust Claude to put the chair on the right side?\nCurrently, not. Not at all.\n\nAnother metaphor was [suggested by Sam Altman](https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-ai-utility-electricity-water-openai-2026-3) of Open AI.\n\nWe see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.\n\nThis is a bit demeaning to the concept of intelligence per se, and that was probably intended. Are you sure you want to call that commodity you sell \"intelligence\"?\n\nSo let me improve that metaphor a little bit. What we get from LLMs is not intelligence per se, but a stream of \"internet conciousness\" that, if left alone, just flows from a high place to a low place. That is indeed a commodity. Following that water metaphor, we are now like the people of Sumer. We learn to divert that stream to water our fields and pump our bellows.\n\nHow do we do it? By building processes. By learning.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-surgeon-s-assistant-or-commodity-on-a-meter", "canonical_source": "https://replicated.wiki/blog/stream.html", "published_at": "2026-06-14 05:46:53+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-14 05:59:41.125292+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["large-language-models", "ai-tools", "ai-ethics", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Geoffrey Litt", "Claude", "Sam Altman", "OpenAI"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-surgeon-s-assistant-or-commodity-on-a-meter", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-surgeon-s-assistant-or-commodity-on-a-meter.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-surgeon-s-assistant-or-commodity-on-a-meter.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-surgeon-s-assistant-or-commodity-on-a-meter.jsonld"}}