Baldur thinks that when he leaves his tech bubble, everyone is much more critical of AI. I couldn’t disagree more. Everyone I know involved in tech, especially in the tech-adjacent fields of journalism and various parts of “nerd” culture is furious about AI. And in my experience, there’s no one more wary than web developers when it comes to AI. My own bubble here couldn’t be further from embracing it.

Meanwhile, I know tons of people who love using CoPilot or Gemini or ChatGPT. Random people tell me all the time about how AI is a better editor/Grammarly for their writing. They talk about how some tedious things they did are easier. I hear things like:

It was so much easier than trying to figure out the right Google Search or watch a 15 minute video on YouTube to figure out what was subtly wrong about this Excel function I wrote. I hate writing sympathy notes. I never know what to say. ChatGPT wrote something trite, but it was enough for me to edit it up a bit and help me get over my procrastination/fear/anxiety. I can’t believe how well this summarized these research papers and helped me to actually figure out which one was relevant to my question.

I’m not all rah-rah about LLMs and what they’re bringing us, but I continue to think that the folks who are most ardently against AI are just plain wrong when they claim these tools are not useful or that no one wants them. That doesn’t mean I think that the hype is fully justified, but pretending these things don’t work or aren’t useful or only produce slop is a skeptic’s wish-casting.