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Confused AI hater(?)

created: November 11th, 2026 | reading time (200 wpm): 7 min

TL;DR; This is not a post trying to convince you to love or hate AI, this is just me trying to get over my own cognitive dissonance in the topic, and if it helps you with yours, the better.

Ever since chatgpt was released, I've tried to distance myself from whatever nonsense that new AI world was doing. Be it, the overhyped trends or apocalyptic claims, I was always really stoic about it and really didn't care at all about it.

Of course, that's what I would love to say, but my feelings towards it have changed every month since, having the emotional stability of a 9 year old, going from hate to apathetic and back, throwing myself into anger or depression at every tweet or news that crossed my screen.

What I never expected was that, eventually, it would all subside, and change for the better. I'm making my own harness for crying out loud. I'm planning on running a good model locally eventually, which is a whole investment. How? Why? The cognitive dissonance is real, and I'm trying to make sense of it.

Where did the hate originate from? and... was it warranted?

To preface, answering the second part of the question, absolutely yes.

I'm not going to dwell too much on this, I'm not special in my point of view, you've heard all the claims:

The thing that was most eye-opening, was realizing that a lot of my erratic feelings came from paying too much attention to what people I deeply admire had to say on the topic, rather than forming my own thoughts. That's normal, people rely on "proxies/authorities" for topics they don't fully understand.

But at some point, I had to take some form of responsibility, specially in something that has clear impact in my career, even if I don't want to pay attention to it.

Did the hate go away? Where did it go?

Let me be clear before moving forward, this is not to claim we have to succumb to the whims of whatever the hell is going on at a macro level, but we do need to try to understand the underlying technology, detached from the nonsense, because the technology itself is not "evil", it is just a new tool, that has been overhyped and mythologized.

None of the issues above have been solved, if anything, they might be worse, but, there's some alternative perspectives that can "mitigate" the hate.

Open-weight/source models can help me detach myself from whatever nonsense the big AI companies are pushing, as well as giving back some sovereignity on how I use a model and what for. (Aside how expensive and feasible it actually is currently). Local models have the potential to be way more environmentally friendly than not, by the mere fact that we're not targeting 100% usage 24/7 as much as some people try to optimize for this.

And even without clear boundaries on copyright, the idea that models should be open-sourced, since they're trained on humanity's knowledge, is a step in the right direction, it still leaves a lot of open questions, like having the right economical incentives for creative endeavours, which people way smarter than I have discussed ad nauseam, still with no real answer.

This is all to say, problems have not been resolved, and I won't claim we should turn a blind eye, but I can temper my anger as there are good on-going conversations looking for a positive alternative.

But is this robbing me of the things I enjoy? Is my skill all for nothing?

For a while, I didn't have to deal with this question 'cause I didn't use AI at all, but it is a reality that most companies (currently) expect employees to use the tool in whatever extent they deem useful (varies from company to company)

So, to begin with, how much do I use it today?

Are you not touching code at work because the AI is that good?

Fuck no. I don't, because it's not writing anything special. Most code has already an established pattern in the codebase which it can replicate, and when it doesn't, its still not special in any sense of the word, its just some web application with an http endpoint or a queue mechanism that has enough reference code in the world. It doesn't have to "figure it out".

The joy I get from my day-to-day job, has never come from solving "interesting" or "novel" technical problems. Most people won't ever even get the opportunity for it. I enjoy it, because problem solving while coordinating teams and social expectations can be fun in its own way, (albeit very frustrating in others).

Casey Muratori, Ryan Fleury and Jonathan Blow have really made me care about performance and quality, but not everyone gets the chance to work on novel problems for a living.

For the technical "fun", I've always been pretty good and consistent in creating my own little lab problems/puzzles. Which by the way, are not even that novel either to begin with!

For example, I recently finished the stable version of a fully native immediate mode UI library written in Odin, because for me it's always been interesting, how does an application actually work? how do pixels get into the screen? how does it know I clicked this button? Why is VisualStudio Code so damn slow and how come everyone is ok with it?

I'm now starting a new project where I'll be learning Vulkan and 3d modeling and animation in Blender, just because I want to put an avatar companion in my UI harness, and I want to start developing the skills for 3d game dev. I know how to build a software rasterizer from scratch, but how do you actually ship a quality game with modern technology?

I do it, because I love the game, I'm not looking for profit, none of it might even be public ever, for all you know, I can barely write main :: proc() {}, but I love the figuring out stuff, that feeling after frustrating hours of banging my head for the aha!

Does AI rob me of that moment? No, if anything, prototyping and removing the dwelling on ideas has made me get those moments more frequently.

Does it translate to other creative activities? Honestly I don't know, but I know for certain I still love the feeling of pen and paper *, even if a model can do whatever in a fraction of time.

I understand this is a privileged position where not everyone has the time to invest in what's effectively a hobby, but the act of enjoying doing something is not at odds with using a tool that simplifies the mechanical component of a task. Two things can be true at the same time.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Disclosure

None of this was AI generated, but I did ask an AI to review it and help me find references where relevant. Also, I had it generate clickbaity titles, and I was a bit fond of these ones:

* PS. I never claimed I was good at drawing

drawings-photo:screenshot