Is that AI?
overly long exhale...
I hate right now.
It's not even because I'm going to officially be mid-40s tomorrow. It's because I feel like life in tech is a perverted version of Groundhog Day. But instead of living out the same scenario over and over, it's being stuck in purgatory being asked one or both of the following damn near every day:
- Can AI do that?
- Is that AI?
Just typing it out has my eye twitching.
I wasn't sure if this post should be split into two, as I think I could probably write a tome on each one separately. I've touched on the first a few times now, as I think the bean counters love the hammer that is "AI" because it justifies a sick arousal some of them have about reductions in force.
Look at my spreadsheet, the numbers look good. The skeleton crew that's left should feel lucky to have jobs. God, I'm glad I didn't get into finance.
The latter question is one that gets posed in response to any and every little creative thing I approach now. Not by everybody, mostly by people that think "AI" is some sort of actual "intelligence".
I've spoken openly about how I use generative AI, agentic coding, and other "LLM-based fuckery" on this blog and beyond. When I use genAI for content, I try to be open about it.
Friendly reminder: I, a human being, write the content for this blog. Any em dashes were part of the conversion from WordPress to Eleventy, nothing more.
My peers in tech are a mixed lot, but most don't default to "you didn't do this, a robot did" mode. That's what pisses me off the most. The question isn't "did you use a robot for this", it's "I don't think you did this yourself".
I like to do creative stuff like making music. I've dabbled with just about every form of art thanks for being an IB dropout that lacked elective credits senior year. I've been harassed by the cops on multiple occasions while trying to capture a moment on film. I once manipulated a feedback loop at a fucking art gallery opening.
Yeah, I do stuff.
That's why this is such a gut punch every time I'm asked. If nothing else, it's a question of my integrity as much as my own insecurities about skill. Doing stuff and putting it out into the world is hard, so it just sucks the joy out of sharing stuff when you're immediately questioned.
The point of this rant? To share a new project, of course ;)
My wife procured a massive sack of dried parsley, and I decided to do a thing. Said thing is a website showcasing my culinary adventures, with and without parsley.
It's called Parsley Makes it Better.
It's dumb, and I love it so so much. What I don't love is being asked if the food photos are AI slop. They aren't. It's real, imperfect, food.
The boring work of setting up the site? Mostly the product of Claude Code.
The dumb little Drake emojis, that's all me. The words on the about page, also me. The laziness in coming up with a logo and utilizing the "herb" emoji. You guessed right! It was me.
This response from people is important to take note of. We, as humans, need to be creating more, and putting ourselves out there.
You could argue that this just trains the robots. Maybe so, but there's already a ton of content already available. New content isn't making these things "smarter", it's how they are being improved internally.
If we just decide to stop self-publishing, the models will continue to improve. What doesn't improve is having the availability of alternatives to the AI trash sites that are clogging up the search engines right now.