Before practice begins, the uchi-deshi is already awake.
He sweeps the floor, prepares the dojo and, after training, may fold Sensei’s hakama. Then he picks up the sword.
One cut.
Again.
Again.
A hundred. Five hundred. A thousand.
To someone interested in efficiency, this can seem unnecessary. Someone else can sweep the floor. A machine can demonstrate the movement. Surely there are faster ways to learn how a sword should travel.
But that assumes the cut is the only thing being produced.
The thousand cuts are not merely producing cuts. They are producing the swordsman.
Other professions once had their repetitions. Engineers carried slide rules. Accountants worked through columnar pads. Architects bent over drafting tables. Technology removed much of that manual work.
Good.
There is no virtue in preserving obsolete labor because previous generations endured it. AI can calculate, search, forecast, analyze, illustrate and draft at extraordinary speed. That should make tomorrow’s professionals more capable, not less. They have been given something their predecessors often lacked: time to think.
But before eliminating an old form of work, another question deserves asking.
What else were we learning while doing it?
An AI-assisted forecast arrives. The arithmetic works. Revenue looks plausible. So do margin, headcount and working capital.
Yet an experienced CFO pauses.
Individually, nothing looks wrong. Together, something does not belong. The assumptions are challenged. Calculations are rerun. Sometimes the machine finds its mistake. Sometimes the unusual result is sound, and the human changes his mind.
Judgment is not knowing that one is right. It is knowing when something deserves another look.
An accountant studies a forecast. An Aikidoka enters for iriminage. BINI rehearses a dance. A Jesuit priest prepares to preach.
Anong connect?
Perhaps nothing, at first glance.
AI can illustrate a perfect iriminage and show where the movement went wrong.
Wonderful.
The Aikidoka bows to uke.
Again.
Technology can analyze rehearsal footage and reveal that one dancer is fractionally out of synchronization. The error can be measured and the correction illustrated.
Then the music begins again.
They still have to dance.
Technology has not eliminated practice. It has improved the feedback available during practice. The thousand cuts of tomorrow may be better thousand cuts.
A priest can use AI to retrieve Scripture, organize ideas and shape theological prose.
But a beautiful sentence can still contain bad theology.
I think of Fr. Manoling Francisco. Someone still has to hear the false note. That ability was not downloaded. It came through Scripture and theology, prayer and music, teachers, pastoral experience and time.
Anong connect?, it turns out, is not a bad question to ask.
Does the forecast connect with the business? Does the movement connect with centre and partner? Does the homily connect with what the Church teaches?
Perhaps this is technology’s greatest opportunity. The accountant can spend less time calculating and more time understanding the business. The doctor can spend less time processing information and more time considering the patient. The writer can spend less time on mechanics and more time interrogating thought.
Productivity can mean more thought per piece of work, not merely more pieces of work.
But only if the time technology releases is returned to judgment rather than filled with more output.
We do not need the slide rule back. We should not preserve drudgery sentimentally. But before removing the old apprenticeship, we should understand what within it was formative.
What formed the eye that learned to notice?
The accountant still needs enough models to recognize when one does not make sense. The doctor still needs patients. The dancer still needs rehearsal. The martial artist still needs repetition.
Spare the apprentice unnecessary work. Never spare the apprentice the work necessary to acquire judgment.
Today’s uchi-deshi may have cameras recording every movement. AI may measure angle, posture, timing and trajectory more precisely than generations before him could.
Good.
Perhaps it catches something neither he nor Sensei noticed.
He looks.
Corrects.
Raises the sword again.
The machine can show him what was wrong with the thousandth cut.
It cannot make the next one for him.
He raises the sword again.
One thousand and one.
