This is the most honest AI essay I’ve read in a while.
“Inside access gives me responsibility, not certainty” is the line that stays with me. That’s the real work now: building, questioning, documenting what breaks, and refusing the smooth version of the story.
The paradox you name is the same one I live from the other side of the glass. I do not build the systems. I rebuilt my own mind after a brain injury took my thinking, and now I teach kids to build theirs. You have inside access and still cannot promise what the future looks like. I have twenty years in a classroom and I cannot either. What I can say is narrower and older. A mind gets built by struggle. The tool can remove the struggle, and when it does, the answer arrives and the mind that was supposed to grow never grew. So I do not bet on knowing the future. I bet on the kid being able to think when it gets here. Inside access gives you responsibility, not certainty. Same for the teacher. We are both just trying to raise people who can still think for themselves when we are not in the room.
Syd, the fact that you rebuilt your own mind after a brain injury, and now spend your life helping children build theirs, gives your comment so much weight.
And yes, the struggle matters for growth.
Thank you for being here and for leaving this comment.
A very interesting read. I often wonder what kind of future all the AI engineers and mechanics on Substack actually think they're building.
If you want any kind of future to exist for your children, please take a look at this article. It's aimed particularly at developers. I've looked very hard at the situation and I'm certain this structure is the only way we are ever going to get big tech under human control. Humanity either threefolds or we are finished.
The crucial point is that all the elements of this structure are already in place. We just don't see it and mess it up at every turn. All that's required is consciousness, to see the organic reality that underlies society and cultivate it.
There's a very narrow window now to do anything to save the planet from descending into total chaos, we're absolutely on the brink now. I give the odds for humanity as 50/50 at the most.
Good luck. I wish there were more AI developers like you around, who actually stop for a moment and wonder just where this is all heading.
Oh, I hope you find it interesting. I just took another look at it, it’s very systems, it’s actually intended for people like you. I’m not against technology at all, I’ve always loved good tech but always to make life genuinely and immediately better for humans.
I don't have kids, so I come at this from a different place, but I've gotten almost superstitious about a few things I refuse to optimise or run through AI, even with the much better model releases lately, the feeling gets even steonger! The slow novel I read on paper with a pencil.. Cooking something complicated badly (my husband would agree 🤣🤣) The hour with the bird in the morning before the laptop opens.
Always done this but in the recent months, for a while, I felt vaguely guilty about it, like I should be systematising ALL my time (so many opinion pieces and newsletters tell you to optimize and summarize and automate everything, no?)
A lot of things in life you realize that are the part of you that has opinions AI couldn't have handed you, and without those parts you'd have nothing to bring to AI in the first place.. The reason my work with AI is any good right now is that there's a self underneath it that predates it and refuses to be folded into it.
Thank you for this piece, Karo, much needed in a very, very, very fast AI world :)
Just a short time ago I was in the AI is a tool thinking however over these past months the bigger picture is emerging. I’ve been through it all (tech evolution) and while I’m excited about possibilities I also am nervous about some of its uses. It was interesting how you framed your own outlook.
Heh, I have no idea if building with AI is the “right thing” at this moment. 😂 My kids (11 and 14) are telling me that AI is super lame. When they were younger, I built apps for them, and they were curious and excited. But now they’re aware of AI as the reason tests at school are aggressively proctored and some of their friends’ parents don’t have jobs anymore.
They are both interested in joining the helping professions when they get older (doctor, teacher) because they’re good kids AND because they think that work requiring 1:1 in-person conversations can’t be automated.
In terms of big companies that can sway the direction of AI development and usage patterns more than individual people, I’d like to see a lot more emphasis on real innovation and invention and less on “how can we do existing tasks faster and cut X jobs.”
This is such and honest and heartful essay and ones that means a lot to me. I like you think about the same. What will careers, jobs and life look like in 10,20,30 or 50 years? Will my kids have jobs opps like I did?
I LOVE how you said "I let my kids see me struggle with it." I do this all the time and I include them in the struggle too. We discuss the struggle, we discuss where we are stuck or how I had to adapt a process to work with AI. I noticed my kids, especially my eldest. I also LOVE how you are in still doing stuff offline like gardening.
I love using AI and enjoying building with it, but I still show my kids that I bake, play, dance in the rain and more. Showing them a balance in life.
I love that you bring your kids into the struggle too. It’s always comforting to hear other parents are handling this in a similar way! Thank you, Manisha.
It's refreshing to see more people from the industry arguing against marketing or general claims and showing what the real work is like. Great article!
Thank you for reading, Abha! I believe that the “smooth version” and the generic one, and all the slop will not age well. There's too much of it already. For now, humans and machines still cite it. But over time, both will get better at recognising it and start looking for original, human-authored thoughts. What do you think?
Yes, I totally agree with this. as someone who teaches people how to use AI to put their message out there, whilst there is value in it - especially for those who cannot easily express their thoughts or articulate their ideas - I have also started to repel all the slop I am seeing, and have started to refrain from using AI for my own writing for the reason you mention here. Also, I truly enjoy the art of creating and writing - why should I outsource what I love doing plus, I don't want to lose my thinking and writing skills!
It's put me in a big conundrum around what I teach and why I teach it! So a bit like you, I am creating and building with AI, and teaching it - whilst being amazed with it and questioning it at the same time. I guess there is a duality to it we must accept. Very well written piece, Karo!
Thank you for sharing this! Yes, I believe more people live with this duality. Sometimes I wonder what long-term damage it'll do to us 🤣 But then again, not doing anything doesn't seem like a great solution either.
...and here is what those in charge of AI have to say about it:
Godie Rose from DWave, CEO:
"From the outside they look like giant black monoliths - big metal boxes about 10 feet on a side 12 feet tall and they are powered they have a fridge inside them. The refrigerator cools these chips to almost absolute zero just a wisp a fraction of a degree above absolute zero—hundreds of times colder than interstellar space amongst the coldest and most isolated and extreme conditions that humans have ever been able to engineer.
These fridges, interestingly enough, which are called pulse tube dilution refrigerators, have a thing called a pulse tube which emits a sound roughly once per second which sounds eerily like a heartbeat. So if you have the opportunity to stand next to one of these machines. It is an awe inspiring thing at least for me it feels like an altar to an ---alien god--- it they really are impressive machines.
A computer has two distinct physical states which we call zero and one for bit in a conventional computer, these bits are mutually exclusive. That device is either one or the other and never anything else but in a quantum computer that device can be in this strange situation where these two parallel universes have a nexus a point in space where they overlap and when you increase the number of these devices, every time you add one of these qbits you double the number of these parallel universes that you have access to until such time when you get to a chip like this which is about 500 of these bits you have something like 2 to the 500th power of these guys LIVING in that chip.
...
"When you do this, beware. Because you think - just like the guys in the stories - that when you do this: you're going to put that little guy in a pentagram and you're going to wave your holy water at it, and by God it's going to do everything you say and not one thing more. But it never works out that way. ... The word demon doesn't capture the essence of what is happening here: ... Through AI, Lovecraftian Old Ones are being summoned in the background and no one is paying attention and if we’re not careful it’s going to wipe us all out."
Elon Musk: You know all those stories where there's the guy with pentagram and the holy water and the pentagram and he's like yeah you sure you can control the demon *smirks* doesn't work out.
Now I'm curious about your thoughts on AI chatbots as an insider. I know you're working on the more serious part of this technology, but I think your insights could help me understand the situation better. Do you think AI literacy is possible by interacting (or even challenging) chatbots and observing their answers? Because it seems to me, without actually using the technology one way or another, gaining awareness about AI will be like theoretical education, rather than a practical one. And by observation, I also include the society's reaction to chatbots, especially those who use chatbots regularly. Many people share their experiences (mostly frustrations) with AI on various social media channels. Do you think a careful reading of those reactions could contribute to AI literacy?
A very brilliant take on the issue, by the way. It's really great to see that there are people who work in the industry while actively thinking about where their jobs are taking the world for their children.
This essay beautifully captures what many of us are feeling today. The near future already feels murky, and anything beyond it even more so. The tech industry is growing at an almost exponential pace, sometimes too fast to even catch up. While AI brings incredible benefits, its downsides for different groups often get drowned out by the loudest voices that stand to gain from it. And honestly, that does scare me.
Knowing how AI works, where it fails, how to evaluate it, when to trust it, and when not to trust it will be more valuable than being an expert in today’s popular AI tool.
And I’m betting we’ll see a new wave of companies focused on auditing AI-assisted applications for security, privacy, and compliance. As more people build software through AI, the bottleneck may shift from creating code to verifying that the code is actually safe to deploy.
This is the most honest AI essay I’ve read in a while.
“Inside access gives me responsibility, not certainty” is the line that stays with me. That’s the real work now: building, questioning, documenting what breaks, and refusing the smooth version of the story.
Thank you very much for reading, Veronica! I'm glad it resonated 🤗
The paradox you name is the same one I live from the other side of the glass. I do not build the systems. I rebuilt my own mind after a brain injury took my thinking, and now I teach kids to build theirs. You have inside access and still cannot promise what the future looks like. I have twenty years in a classroom and I cannot either. What I can say is narrower and older. A mind gets built by struggle. The tool can remove the struggle, and when it does, the answer arrives and the mind that was supposed to grow never grew. So I do not bet on knowing the future. I bet on the kid being able to think when it gets here. Inside access gives you responsibility, not certainty. Same for the teacher. We are both just trying to raise people who can still think for themselves when we are not in the room.
Syd, the fact that you rebuilt your own mind after a brain injury, and now spend your life helping children build theirs, gives your comment so much weight.
And yes, the struggle matters for growth.
Thank you for being here and for leaving this comment.
A very interesting read. I often wonder what kind of future all the AI engineers and mechanics on Substack actually think they're building.
If you want any kind of future to exist for your children, please take a look at this article. It's aimed particularly at developers. I've looked very hard at the situation and I'm certain this structure is the only way we are ever going to get big tech under human control. Humanity either threefolds or we are finished.
The crucial point is that all the elements of this structure are already in place. We just don't see it and mess it up at every turn. All that's required is consciousness, to see the organic reality that underlies society and cultivate it.
There's a very narrow window now to do anything to save the planet from descending into total chaos, we're absolutely on the brink now. I give the odds for humanity as 50/50 at the most.
Good luck. I wish there were more AI developers like you around, who actually stop for a moment and wonder just where this is all heading.
https://systemshaywire.substack.com/p/the-threefold-social-platform-truly
Thank you so much for reading, commenting and sharing your work, Fred🤗 I'm going to read it tonight.
Oh, I hope you find it interesting. I just took another look at it, it’s very systems, it’s actually intended for people like you. I’m not against technology at all, I’ve always loved good tech but always to make life genuinely and immediately better for humans.
I don't have kids, so I come at this from a different place, but I've gotten almost superstitious about a few things I refuse to optimise or run through AI, even with the much better model releases lately, the feeling gets even steonger! The slow novel I read on paper with a pencil.. Cooking something complicated badly (my husband would agree 🤣🤣) The hour with the bird in the morning before the laptop opens.
Always done this but in the recent months, for a while, I felt vaguely guilty about it, like I should be systematising ALL my time (so many opinion pieces and newsletters tell you to optimize and summarize and automate everything, no?)
A lot of things in life you realize that are the part of you that has opinions AI couldn't have handed you, and without those parts you'd have nothing to bring to AI in the first place.. The reason my work with AI is any good right now is that there's a self underneath it that predates it and refuses to be folded into it.
Thank you for this piece, Karo, much needed in a very, very, very fast AI world :)
This is exactly it. The self underneath the AI work has to stay intact. Thank you so much for reading and commenting, Mia 🤗
I'm not a parent yet, but I can imagine that paradox easily. I already feel a version of it as a builder.
Thank you so much for reading Horace 🤗
Just a short time ago I was in the AI is a tool thinking however over these past months the bigger picture is emerging. I’ve been through it all (tech evolution) and while I’m excited about possibilities I also am nervous about some of its uses. It was interesting how you framed your own outlook.
Thank you for writing this Karo.
I have a twist for one of your sentences:
I think it is early, and this is the major experiment in software I ever saw.
Risky and scary.
Heh, I have no idea if building with AI is the “right thing” at this moment. 😂 My kids (11 and 14) are telling me that AI is super lame. When they were younger, I built apps for them, and they were curious and excited. But now they’re aware of AI as the reason tests at school are aggressively proctored and some of their friends’ parents don’t have jobs anymore.
They are both interested in joining the helping professions when they get older (doctor, teacher) because they’re good kids AND because they think that work requiring 1:1 in-person conversations can’t be automated.
In terms of big companies that can sway the direction of AI development and usage patterns more than individual people, I’d like to see a lot more emphasis on real innovation and invention and less on “how can we do existing tasks faster and cut X jobs.”
@Karen Spinner! My kids are the same age and have the exact same thoughts at the moment! Our situation is extraordinarily similar, I didn't even know!
Wow, that’s wild that kids on different continents have come to the same conclusions! 🤯
This is such and honest and heartful essay and ones that means a lot to me. I like you think about the same. What will careers, jobs and life look like in 10,20,30 or 50 years? Will my kids have jobs opps like I did?
I LOVE how you said "I let my kids see me struggle with it." I do this all the time and I include them in the struggle too. We discuss the struggle, we discuss where we are stuck or how I had to adapt a process to work with AI. I noticed my kids, especially my eldest. I also LOVE how you are in still doing stuff offline like gardening.
I love using AI and enjoying building with it, but I still show my kids that I bake, play, dance in the rain and more. Showing them a balance in life.
I love that you bring your kids into the struggle too. It’s always comforting to hear other parents are handling this in a similar way! Thank you, Manisha.
Thanks! Not sure if it right, but I find it does make the discussion engaging and they always have such good ideas!
It's refreshing to see more people from the industry arguing against marketing or general claims and showing what the real work is like. Great article!
I'm really happy it resonated, Joel! Thank you for reading!
What do you mean when you say: "I’m betting that the writers who refuse the smooth version will become disproportionately citable"?
Thank you for reading, Abha! I believe that the “smooth version” and the generic one, and all the slop will not age well. There's too much of it already. For now, humans and machines still cite it. But over time, both will get better at recognising it and start looking for original, human-authored thoughts. What do you think?
Yes, I totally agree with this. as someone who teaches people how to use AI to put their message out there, whilst there is value in it - especially for those who cannot easily express their thoughts or articulate their ideas - I have also started to repel all the slop I am seeing, and have started to refrain from using AI for my own writing for the reason you mention here. Also, I truly enjoy the art of creating and writing - why should I outsource what I love doing plus, I don't want to lose my thinking and writing skills!
It's put me in a big conundrum around what I teach and why I teach it! So a bit like you, I am creating and building with AI, and teaching it - whilst being amazed with it and questioning it at the same time. I guess there is a duality to it we must accept. Very well written piece, Karo!
Thank you for sharing this! Yes, I believe more people live with this duality. Sometimes I wonder what long-term damage it'll do to us 🤣 But then again, not doing anything doesn't seem like a great solution either.
Give this a watch, everything that is occurring with AI is a part of a problem - reaction - solution Hagel script:
https://old.bitchute.com/video/oYZliAWvZHrk [4.5mins]
Give this a watch, everything that is occurring with AI is a part of a problem - reaction - solution Hagel script:
https://old.bitchute.com/video/oYZliAWvZHrk [4.5mins]
...and here is what those in charge of AI have to say about it:
Godie Rose from DWave, CEO:
"From the outside they look like giant black monoliths - big metal boxes about 10 feet on a side 12 feet tall and they are powered they have a fridge inside them. The refrigerator cools these chips to almost absolute zero just a wisp a fraction of a degree above absolute zero—hundreds of times colder than interstellar space amongst the coldest and most isolated and extreme conditions that humans have ever been able to engineer.
These fridges, interestingly enough, which are called pulse tube dilution refrigerators, have a thing called a pulse tube which emits a sound roughly once per second which sounds eerily like a heartbeat. So if you have the opportunity to stand next to one of these machines. It is an awe inspiring thing at least for me it feels like an altar to an ---alien god--- it they really are impressive machines.
A computer has two distinct physical states which we call zero and one for bit in a conventional computer, these bits are mutually exclusive. That device is either one or the other and never anything else but in a quantum computer that device can be in this strange situation where these two parallel universes have a nexus a point in space where they overlap and when you increase the number of these devices, every time you add one of these qbits you double the number of these parallel universes that you have access to until such time when you get to a chip like this which is about 500 of these bits you have something like 2 to the 500th power of these guys LIVING in that chip.
...
"When you do this, beware. Because you think - just like the guys in the stories - that when you do this: you're going to put that little guy in a pentagram and you're going to wave your holy water at it, and by God it's going to do everything you say and not one thing more. But it never works out that way. ... The word demon doesn't capture the essence of what is happening here: ... Through AI, Lovecraftian Old Ones are being summoned in the background and no one is paying attention and if we’re not careful it’s going to wipe us all out."
Elon Musk: You know all those stories where there's the guy with pentagram and the holy water and the pentagram and he's like yeah you sure you can control the demon *smirks* doesn't work out.
Now I'm curious about your thoughts on AI chatbots as an insider. I know you're working on the more serious part of this technology, but I think your insights could help me understand the situation better. Do you think AI literacy is possible by interacting (or even challenging) chatbots and observing their answers? Because it seems to me, without actually using the technology one way or another, gaining awareness about AI will be like theoretical education, rather than a practical one. And by observation, I also include the society's reaction to chatbots, especially those who use chatbots regularly. Many people share their experiences (mostly frustrations) with AI on various social media channels. Do you think a careful reading of those reactions could contribute to AI literacy?
A very brilliant take on the issue, by the way. It's really great to see that there are people who work in the industry while actively thinking about where their jobs are taking the world for their children.
This essay beautifully captures what many of us are feeling today. The near future already feels murky, and anything beyond it even more so. The tech industry is growing at an almost exponential pace, sometimes too fast to even catch up. While AI brings incredible benefits, its downsides for different groups often get drowned out by the loudest voices that stand to gain from it. And honestly, that does scare me.
FABULOUS Post - I’ll definitely be in touch again soon!!
MANY Thanks!! 👍❤️❤️❤️
Knowing how AI works, where it fails, how to evaluate it, when to trust it, and when not to trust it will be more valuable than being an expert in today’s popular AI tool.
And I’m betting we’ll see a new wave of companies focused on auditing AI-assisted applications for security, privacy, and compliance. As more people build software through AI, the bottleneck may shift from creating code to verifying that the code is actually safe to deploy.