Lately our group chat has been discussing "distilling" β feeding a colleague's work methods into AI to replicate their approach. You sit there using AI to distill a coworker's craft, and they have no idea.
I've been doing a lot of "traitorous" things. Before, for internal pages, I'd queue with IT, submit requirements, wait for development β weeks. Now I open Cursor, vibe code for an afternoon, and the page is running.
Whose work hours were those? How many people were needed before? Now it's just me plus AI.
But what about the people being distilled? I'm certainly one of them. My accumulated experience is being extracted and turned into a callable module.
Creativity, judgment, that unique perspective β these things can't be distilled.
I've given my current state a name: the confused workplace traitor.