John Henry in the age of AI :: davepedu.comJohn Henry in the age of AI<br>2026-08-06Dave<br>#ai<br>#programming There is an American folk tale about a man named John Henry. It dates to the mid 19th century, a time during which<br>America was rapidly industrializing and the use of steam power was picking up… Well, steam.<br>Being a folklore tale, there are many different variations of it, though, most examples describe him as a man employed<br>on the construction of railroads. His specific role is often described as a “steel-driving” man but this takes<br>various specific forms such as hammering steel drills into rock to dig railroad tunnels, or hammering the spikes that<br>hold the rails to the wooden sleepers. Generally speaking, John Henry<br>is depicted as an extremely skilled and well respected worker.<br>There are many full-text versions available online, but I’ll specifically reference<br>this one. The synopsis of the tale of John Henry is<br>as follows:<br>John Henry is a railway construction worker and sees a steam-powered machine performing his job at an incredible pace.<br>He decides to measure his prowess as a railway construction worker by having a duel against the steam-powered machine.<br>The duel is usually something along the lines of racing to mine a railway tunnel or set and spike down a length of<br>track, with the winner being the fastest to complete.<br>John Henry ultimately beats the machine, but the exertion he put his body through to do so causes it to give out, and<br>he passes away.<br>It is the classical man-versus-machine tale. And I think the parallels that can be drawn between it and the emergence<br>of AI in recent years are clear, and I will discuss them later on.<br>I heard the story of John Henry when I was a child, but I forgot all about it until just recently. I subscribe to<br>several different interpretations of the folklore tale, but, in my opinion, it ultimately boils down to a statement on<br>how ever-advancing technology disrupts and conflicts with human dignity, perseverance, ability, and purpose. It is a<br>reasonable conclusion that John Henry felt threatened by the emergence of technology that could replace him. And his<br>response of setting up a duel against said technology suggests that he wanted to prove that he, a human, can equal or<br>defeat the machine. And the outcome of the duel asserts that man, the human spirit, ultimately triumphs over machine,<br>but at a cost. This time, the cost was John Henry’s life.<br>Looking back on this story almost two centuries later, with a modern perspective over the technology we have now, coaxes<br>out some obviosities. The use of machinery in tunneling and railway construction are the norm. Construction without<br>machinery and with only human labor is practically non-existent anywhere machinery is available. There are still<br>“steel-driving” men, but their tools are no longer hand tools like John Henry’s, but machines.<br>And the benefits of this shift to mechanization are obvious: such projects are completed faster, consuming fewer<br>resources, and - most importantly - more safely and with a lower human cost. Other external factors like safety<br>standards evolving over time too absolutely come into play here. However, having fewer humans on the job site, and<br>more machines, ultimately expose less humans to harm for simple mathematical reasons.<br>I assert that the meaning behind the tale of John Henry is directly applicable to what is happening right now. It can<br>easily be interpreted as an allegory describing the emergence of AI and the impact that AI’s emergence has on how labor<br>is executed and what the value of a human being is with respect to work.<br>Let’s interpret the tale of John Henry in the context of the last couple of years of technological advancement and the<br>emergence and adoption of - and opposition to - AI. I’m a software engineer, and will largely speak from the perspective<br>of my career.<br>Software engineering is a field some speculate will be replaced by AI. Boris Cherny is the creator and head of Claude<br>Code at Anthropic and, Anthropic is currently one of the top companies that actually creates AI, rather than consuming<br>it. Cherny famously stated that “coding is largely solved” - to the chagrin of many software engineers everywhere.<br>That’s our first parallel to John Henry. A machine has been created that, in theory, can take the place of a human and<br>do a task a human was previously required for. This corresponds to the steam-powered machine John Henry dueled against.<br>Sidebar: I completely understand that you can’t remove a human from their desk and plop an AI there and get 1:1 results.<br>I am not making the argument that AI is sophisticated and accurate enough that this is doable. I write code for a<br>living. I have seen the code that AI generates. They are not on the same level yet. Yet. I am also not commenting on<br>whether I think AI will ever reach that point. It is inarguable that technology advances and gets better,...