I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about good generative AI practices, most particularly for code. This is obviously a rapidly evolving topic in a nascent space, but I have a metaphor here that I’ve used repeatedly, and I stand by it: treat generative AI like a bicycle, not a taxi.

Bicycles require skill and finesse to operate, but provide mechanical advantage to the operator. They don’t do all the work for you, but they amplify and accelerate the work you would have done anyway. They’re guided and constrained by the intent, desires, and limitations of their operator to get you there quickly. You can alter your pace and your direction in response to what you learn.

In contrast, some people like to let the agent do the driving: get me from here to there, I don’t care how. In this model, the operator is substituting their own thinking for the decisions the agentic system is making on their behalf. Since the challenge of programming comes in no small part from the accumulation of lots of small decisions, it’s hard to argue that any use of generative AI isn’t a form of delegation, but there’s a difference between accepting an output unquestioningly and approaching it with a critical lens.

That’s where the metaphor matters. A bicycle demands constant attention and course correction; a taxi does not. The difference is human review. If you use generative AI to arrive at the destination more quickly, great. But when you put your name on something, like a pull request, I want to be able to treat it as your work, regardless of how it was authored, and know that it represents your genuine perspective.

Part of the economic promise of generative AI is that it will increase the productivity of knowledge workers in a way other technologies have struggled to do. We may eventually reach a point where we can accept its code outputs less critically. But to realize that promise in this moment without placing users at risk, its use must center on the impulse, creativity, craft, and agency of the human. Like riding a bicycle, it only works if you stay in control.

And, speaking as a dad, please wear a helmet.

Boy with bicycle, Basel, Robert Frank, 1945.