I Stopped Drinking the AI Kool-Aid
After years of embracing AI—from championing GitHub Copilot to building autonomous agents—the author had a wake-up call during a video call with an exhausted human. He realized the AI hype had become a cult-like demand, and he began noticing a dead internet and disconnected society. Now he's reconnecting with people, finding joy in human interaction, and feeling invigorated after stepping away from the AI Kool-Aid.
I left the call wondering "all this AI shit is absolutely killing us" and not in the Terminator 2: Judgment Day sort of way.
- variety8675
Using AI agents to email each other is just a reflection of "If you're not going to bother to write it, I'm not going to read it"
- dumberquestions
A lot of AI uses get endlessly debated online and outside, but the most shocking to me is that even genuine human interaction is somehow now up for debate, if I'm not interacting with real people then what even is the point of doing anything.
- oenton
> Getting on a video call was eye opening in many ways. Seeing the exhaustion on his whole body.
This describes a non trivial number of my colleagues. What's more concerning is witnessing the cognitive decline, for example struggling to debug straight forward problems[1] and mindlessly copy/pasting stack traces into a chat box. While I'm definitely guilty of the latter I usually resort to that when I'm tired, or just hoping to avoid actually thinking through a problem because I have N other tasks to complete, which really ties back to the whole exhaustion thing.
Anyway thank you for putting this into words and congratulations on your recent fledglings. (I had to Google that one. Bird analogies aren't my strong suit.)
- cheschire
Maybe this is a response to becoming an empty nester. You’re entering the next phase and taking time to reflect.
The American monoculture, especially the “bigger” version you probably see in Texas, gets a little more direct observation when you’re between phases of life.
Right now the monoculture is leaning into heavily using AI in all aspects of life while also outwardly hating it… and also gambling for some reason.
You’ll probably start looking to retirement goals next, but those plans will likely go through phases themselves as grandkids may or may not enter the picture.
This won’t be the last time you have one of these out-of-body type self awareness experiences.
- jostylr
Reasonable piece. I always thought the hope/promise of AI was to make it do the work we don't want to do so that we can enjoy life the way we want to which is typically socializing with humans? I get that it generates so much that if you are reviewing thoughtfully everything it is doing, it can suck you away like being a worker at a conveyor belt, but hopefully that is a short period of growing pains. A related take on staying human in the age of AI: https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/the-lost-subject-ai...