Thoughts on AI... v
4 May, 2026
Well, okay. For the last few years, AI’s been one of those things that, to me, was almost not even worth talking about. I have long shared most young people’s generally negative sentiment towards AI-generated content, and have acted in accordance with my suspicions of Algorithmically Inclined platforms. I got off Instagram in 2019, rebuilt and rehosted my website with my own HTML in 2024, took my videos off YouTube and got a flip phone in 2026. By 2030 I’ll probably be dead of starvation in a cabin in the woods in Canada somewhere. I take this shit pretty seriously, but I’m not, like, a hardass. I don’t really care, I just don’t want to be associated with any of it. You know what I mean?
I’m not a luddite is what I’m saying. I spend at least eight hours a day at a computer, just like everybody else. I’ll never tell you we need to go back to the past, or that nostalgia tech is a moral highground. I’ve been more or less content, the last few years, feeling more and more like the old guy in “UP.”
Although lately I’ve noticed something changing inside me. The little bit of space in my brain that AI stuff occupied, which once had all the potency of a fart in the wind, has started to feel like a room I’m trapped in, and, um, somebody keeps… farting. I don’t know how far I can stretch this thing, but… a shit’s coming, I guess, and there’ll be flies, then autonomous shit-scooping drones, and driverless cars running it over, shit smeared billboards, and every advertisement, product, website, and Instagram reel will be thoroughly shitty and… and…
The AI stuff is shit. And no part of it is human, so the amount of animosity it’s able to generate in me makes me feel like a psychopath. Lately, I’ve been feeling angry.
It’s true that I’m part of a lucky (and ever-shrinking) population of people to whom AI is pushed as an exciting tool, and not the thing replacing them (or the field next to their house with a datacenter). I have not truly had my life turned upside-down, yet, and for all of the Waymos, E-Scooters, and office buildings I’ve , , and not done other terrible things to, I have never been arrested. We're probably on the brink of another industrial revolution, but for now, and to me, AI gets to be this happy punching bag, still beaming down from the new AI button on this Google Doc, always there for me when I need it.
And sometimes I do need it. I am increasingly deciding I need it. I shamefully rely on AI to teach me certain coding stuff. Well, sometimes it codes my handmade, organic HTML site for me, there’s stuff I just don’t know how to do, but I’m always making the design decision. Um, for now. And everybody’s hypocrites anyway, all of these anti-AI people, who still Google stuff. (You should switch to DuckDuckGo, I did. Learn how to use the terminal on your computer to disable stuff. Apple Intelligence is about to be everywhere, anyway, you should install Linux. But what about the algorithm that indexes Spotlight Search, or removes the background from your Photoshop project? What would you do without those?) How is it this hard to imagine going back to doing things ourselves?
Oh my god. Maybe the Spotify Auto DJ can drown out my suffering.
This is what AI does, and I think it’s a big part of why I’m mad at it. It’s an unparalleled productivity tool, and sets a new standard for efficiency that humans can’t live up to by themselves. We’re being squished now more than ever, and under-resourced humans, when it’s an option, will optimize the joy out of their lives. Nothing that we actually care about, that fills our lives with meaning, can be generated. Efficiency can be such a poison to art, connection, experience. I imagine if we continue to hold these values as a culture, we’re just going to find the most efficient way to our own destruction. And for as much of my life as I spend on a computer, it’s not what I mistake for its true meaning. It’s just shit I have to deal with.
Learn more...
AI article 1
AI essay 2
New details emerge in Waymo killing of San Francisco corner store cat
My newest reason to Waymo cameras: they’re used as 24/7, autonomous surveillance units to make arrests– just found that out.
Also just found out, after a meet with the dean, I’m banned from the dorms till April for throwing rotten eggs at them from my girlfriend’s window, but that's a different essay. Resist!