What makes you feel human?

I am was almost a data scientist. I feel imposter syndrome creeping in on me more and more every day, and today I want to talk about it. 

It is 2026, and LLMs are mainstream now. Almost everyone uses them. 

I am sure my entire team and I would hesitate to write an email without using any of these LLMs. I have seen people use it to frame even WhatsApp messages now. My brother often tells me stories about patients who have a very down-to-earth lifestyle, often small farmers using ChatGPT to come up with a diagnosis of their problems before reaching the hospital. 

I see people blindly trusting it, and why shouldn't they? It makes them feel better! I make a living out of telling people how to use these LLMs the right way, how they hallucinate, what not to use them for and how LLMs phrase sentences that are aimed to make you feel better. Yet, I used it for analysing my birth chart a couple of days ago (call it irony, call it hypocrisy, I don't know, I slept through my English classes.)

I often use LLMs to validate my thoughts, and they do (make me feel better). I ask them to contradict and tell me why this is not a good idea, and they do that too! And what's surprising is that their arguments convince you almost always! I have started to use phrases like "Be brutal" or "No need to be nice" and to my surprise, they immediately give better responses. Fun Fact: Say Codex or ChatGPT will evaluate your response, and you will find Claude immediately working harder LOL 

My entire team has a Claude Code subscription now, and it is a game-changer! We finished an entire year's worth of roadmap in one month. IN ONE MONTH! 

But all of this use of LLMs has started to give me more and more imposter syndrome. Because as a software engineer, I am paid to write code, which is not happening a lot recently. I usually write prompts to Claude till the software is working as I desire it to be. I am more like a QA to Claude these days, constantly reporting bugs.  

The skills I used to be proud of do not matter anymore. I used to have all keyboard shortcuts in my muscle memory; every single person in my company used to envy how fast I could write code, but now Claude can do it much faster than me! This is the new reality: writing code, developing software, implementation is not the challenge, it is who can sell how much and how quickly! Just yesterday I tried to write a function by hand after my limit was exhausted, and boy, it was a nightmare! 

Nature has this cruel habit of taking away what is not in use and substituting it for something which is required. We don't have fur anymore, a blind person often has enhanced senses of touch, smell or hearing and so on. 

And if we are not using our brains then... 

When you go to a shop, do you total the bill yourself in your head? Can you quickly calculate 5% of 327 in your head? Or would you need a calculator? And we are educated? 

An "uneducated" street vendor can do all of this in their head; they know the business concepts of CP, SP, Profit, Margin, etc., etc., etc. 

So I want to ask you now, in this age of AI, what makes you feel human? If your messages, emails, code and everything are written by AI? Can you negotiate your appraisal without using LLMs? 

I do not use LLMs in this blog; I want it to be as raw as possible, I want to make mistakes and feel human. I am not a scholar who uses heavy, hard-to-understand, cool words. But I do use Grammarly, am I guilty? 

I try to do small calculations in my head, like totalling the vegetable bill and approximating the price of discounted goods, and I don't know if you noticed, but the newer generation in the same shops and showrooms  use calculators now, or say something like "I will need to go check at the counter" 

Does this mean we all should ditch LLMs and start coding by hand? Absolutely not! We will be left behind and replaced by people who use them! All we need to do is stop being lazy and use our brains where we can. Or maybe I am turning into one of those uncles I used to hate as a child! 

I don't feel like a data scientist anymore, which is a side effect, 

I would love to know how you feel human and what you would recommend? 

Well, I found myself ranting again. I hope to see you guys soon! 

Thanks for reading.

Anchit