# AI: Surgeon's Assistant or Commodity on a Meter?

> Source: <https://replicated.wiki/blog/stream.html>
> Published: 2026-06-14 05:46:53+00:00

V. Grishchenko

There has been many metaphors proposed for AI assisted coding.
For example, Geoffrey Litt suggested ["code like a surgeon"](https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/10/24/code-like-a-surgeon)
metaphor: your are the surgeon, LLM is your assistant. Delegate
the grunt work to AI, do what matters.

When 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.

I had a surgery once, so I get it. I remember how rudely a
surgeon reprimanded his assistant for a minor mishap that could
have **potentially** caused a medical error. Nice to hear when it
is your flesh on the table. The assistant, I believe, have
internalized that and likely does surgeries by now. Meanwhile,
I reprimand Claude virtually every day and I am not sure if it
helps at all. What Claude does well is reproducing a stream of
"internet conciousness", its effective training set.

The other thing I noticed in the operating room is the formal
**process**. Paid by countless lives, a process that allows to
minimize the preventable negative outcomes. The process of
organizational and cultural **learning**. The surgeon re-read my
papers before entering the room. A day before there was a
medical **concillium** where my case was seen by several doctors.
A surgeon sees many patients. Cases are somewhat similar cause
modern surgeons are highly specialized. Still, he remembered
that the surgery is on the right, while a chair was set on the
left. An assistant got that well-deserved kick in the butt, so
to say. Can we trust Claude to put the chair on the right side?
Currently, not. Not at all.

Another metaphor was [suggested by Sam Altman](https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-ai-utility-electricity-water-openai-2026-3) of Open AI.

We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.

This 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"?

So 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.

How do we do it? By building processes. By learning.