Hey, look, another AI article. here's some novel takes:

AI uses too much water!
AI is scraping data it shouldn't!
AI slop is being used to scam people!
Yes... and welcome to the modern world. It's a terrible drain on resources that doesn't respect privacy and is used to make GDP, KPIs and IPOs go BRRRRRRRRR. This is nothing new.

It feels like we are so preoccupied with holding AI accountable for the serious harms we have already swallowed as the price of modern life that we are opening ourselves up to being blindsided by the very ironically human problems we face.

Take, for instance, the very real issue I'd wager thousands of people from all walks of life are having to come to terms with:

Your ideas suck

We have, up until recent history, had the safety blanket of being able to shy away from testing our ideas through the guise of unaffordable effort.

  • "If I had the money to launch a startup"
  • "I'd love to make X, there's a huge market for it, but I don't have the time"
  • "They should add this feature, people would kill for it!"

And then you can tell your friends, partner, dog about how very clever you would be, pat yourself on the back and move on with your day, safe in the knowledge you will never have to prove any of that.

But now, for less than £20 a month, your LLM of choice will happily kneecap your ego.

Suddenly those barriers we construct in front of ourselves are feeling hella flimsy. Claude can help me make that game in a weekend. Codex can whip up that landing page in minutes. Gemini, well, can probably do something. And once the horde of thirsty GPUs are done, what are you left with? Well, from my experience, both personal and observed, one of two options:

Either you find out people don't care, or worse... you don't care.

Of course, you can push and find people to care, convince them to care, or Silicon Valley it and just pay them to care. But more often than not you will hit the roadblock first that you can no longer convince yourself it's worth it. And that, that fucking sucks.

Suddenly it's not choosing the right framework, or product fit, or NDAs, or lack of resources. It's you. Plain old you. And faced with the idea you might not be enough, well, now all the marketing rhetoric, toxic message board hot takes and inflammatory headlines kind of stop mattering. Without the promised horizon of something else being the blocker to your dreams, life starts to look a little different.

And that's a hard pill to swallow. I am still choking on it. But I think there is only one way through.

Your ego has lost. let it. grieve it. Long live the heart.

Honestly, how much did you actually enjoy arguing about which framework or programming language was best? or why a new product feature was 'horrible' and 'terrible' and 'would never work'. Once I start pulling that thread I realise I never actually cared, I think I just liked the idea of control that version of me felt like it projected. Nothing got built or done or explored but we certainly criticised every major success and took turns bragging about how we would have done it.

No amount of hearing from colleagues about how blind the CEO is, or how they would do things differently or how garbage Instagram was and how they'd 'build it better' ever made me feel good. But I do remember how good the game jams that made no sense felt. The private jokes that I took so far beyond their welcome they ended up with a website shared on the group chat. Or even the sobering 4am talks with friends when we realised the code was never going to work and we may have wasted a whole weekend.

Mostly because those things were dumb. And they made me feel alive in a very human way. Because it's not vulnerable to be right all the time, and spend all your energy not looking wrong. Or maybe more importantly, to be wrong with other people, in public. To be seen to make mistakes and laugh and be proud of your weird little creations.

So fuck it. If I'm going to make something then from now on it's going to wear its flaws. And people can critique it, and I invite them to. Because that is a conversation they can have with Claude.

I will be over here facing the fact my ideas are dumb... and laughing as I welcome them with open arms.