AI is not that interesting

I’ve been working with technology professionally for over 25 years and I’ve been into computers for most of my life, so I’ve seen quite a lot. I had computers that used cassettes for storage, then floppy disks of both sizes. Up to that point I either used TVs as monitors or green CRTs – colour monitors were just too expensive in Brazil. Then I finally had a 486 in front of me, but the internet was yet to come.

I lived through the dot com bubble, from start to finish. I made a career on it! There was a lot of hype, but one thing was constant: it was interesting. It represented a true shift in perspective. People were trying all sorts of different approaches while the possibilities were still being discovered.

Now we are at the heights of the AI bubble and everything is bland

AI is really great at generating sameness. If AI was a colour it would be beige.

Here’s a chatbot. Here’s an image generator. Here’s a video generator. Here’s a way to write unreliable code faster. Here’s a really awful and inaccurate search engine. Here’s a model with 90 billion parameters that’s somehow less accurate than the previous one.

Rinse and repeat every week, along with endless LinkedIn posts – all AI-written, all featuring awful generative art by people with zero taste.

AI is about not giving a shit

AI is a half-assing machine. It kinda sorta solves problems more or less correctly some of the time if you’re lucky. It’s great for writing things that won’t be read, pictures that won't be noticed and videos that won't be watched.

Everyone is faking it, so here’s a machine that’s really great at faking skills. That makes it perfect for wannabe tech entrepreneurs, middle-managers and CEOs. That's the market and the audience.

The problem is I'm big on craft. I insist on giving many shits. I believe in taking time to make things that are worth someone else’s time.

It’s about respect. That’s the bare minimum.

People who are Very Into AI are not interesting people

The non-interestingness of Very Into AI people is very specific. They make their living from bullshit, so bullshitting harder and faster is top priority. The high volume makes their bullshit more visible, and once it’s visible from space they believe people will say “wow! You must know a lot to produce so much bullshit at such speed!”

But it’s still bullshit. They're lazy people with no taste who love pretending to be skilled at something, anything. People who love ChatGPT can’t be bothered to spend time thinking about what they want to say – they just want it to be said (usually on LinkedIn).

They’re the same people who made fun of you when you were in school and wanted learn how to paint, play a weird instrument or anything that wasn’t super mainstream and required effort.

Everyone wants to be a thought leader yet no one wants to think.

There’s no conclusion or happy ending here

This is just where we are right now, sadly.

AI isn't useless – I do use assistants to help me write code. LLMs are great at recognizing patterns and code is patterns all the way down! But I wouldn’t be caught dead using it to create a presentation or a goddamn email. Thinking is not that hard, and writing is thinking. When you let an LLM speak for you, what’s the point?

I guess if you have a soul-crushing job where your irrelevance is assumed, then more power to you! But if you want to make a mark – even if it’s on the endless void that is social media – make it good, give a shit. Anyone worth your time is doing it.

And if they aren’t, why are you reading something nobody bothered to write?

Update - Oct 7 2025

What do you know, The Oatmeal just posted a new comic that's basically what I wrote above, only less polite. Which honestly was my original intention (you have no idea how much I toned it down).