One of the central tensions around AI: no matter which side of the fence you are on, there is probably a little of Column A and a little of Column B in you.
At least, there is for me.
What's good about AI?
- It has helped me bring side projects to life that I never had the energy to tackle after a full day of work.
- It helped me resurrect Putter King, an old miniature golf mobile game, so my kids could finally play it.
- Using OpenClaw, I set up a personal assistant that has removed a huge amount of stress from our household planning and scheduling. We text Coop our plans. He remembers them, reminds us, and occasionally tells an Interstellar dad joke.
- It helps me translate forms and other complicated documents here in Japan, and respond to them faster.
What's bad?
- It sometimes feels like AI has taken away my superpower: being able to make ideas come to life quickly through software. I could create software when many people could not. Now many more people can build things, which is great, but it also makes a skill I spent decades developing feel less valuable.
- It has raised expectations for speed, output, and quality across the board.
- It has cast suspicion over almost everything created after 2023. Art, music, writing, software. The genie is out of the bottle, and we will never again know with certainty whether something was created by a person, generated by AI, or produced somewhere in between.
- It has not helped us work less or spend more time with our families. If anything, it has increased the pressure to produce more, faster.
- The brain is a muscle, and I worry that we are choosing not to exercise it.
- It clouds the future. What will our children's working lives look like? What should they study? Which skills will still matter?
- It keeps us behind screens, consuming more junk content while using AI to create even more of it.
- It consumes enormous amounts of energy and resources.
- It is dangerously easy to trust, despite the bias, hallucinations, and misinformation it can produce.
- And yes, I suspect it will eventually destroy more jobs than it creates.
There are exciting things AI makes possible. I am also uncomfortable with where it may take us.
Both things can be true.