AI isn’t the app, it’s the UI - Stack Overflow Blog

In some ways, the fervor around AI is reminiscent of blockchain hype, which has steadily cooled since its 2021 peak. In almost all cases, blockchain technology serves no purpose but to make software slower, more difficult to fix, and a bigger target for scammers. AI isn’t nearly as frivolous—it has several novel use cases—but many are rightly wary of the resemblance. And there are concerns to be had; AI bears the deceptive appearance of a free lunch and, predictably, has non-obvious downsides that some founders and VCs will insist on learning the hard way.

This is a good level-headed overview of how generative language model tools work.

If something can be reduced to patterns, however elaborate they may be, AI can probably mimic it. That’s what AI does. That’s the whole story.

There’s very practical advice on deciding where and when these tools make sense:

The sweet spot for AI is a context where its choices are limited, transparent, and safe. We should be giving it an API, not an output box.

AI isn’t the app, it’s the UI - Stack Overflow Blog

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Progress Without Disruption - Christopher Butler

We’ve been taught that technological change must be chaotic, uncontrolled, and socially destructive — that anything less isn’t real innovation.

The conflation of progress with disruption serves specific interests. It benefits those who profit from rapid, uncontrolled deployment. “You can’t stop progress” is a very convenient argument when you’re the one profiting from the chaos, when your business model depends on moving fast and breaking things before anyone can evaluate whether those things should be broken.

We’ve internalized technological determinism so completely that choosing not to adopt something — or choosing to adopt it slowly, carefully, with conditions — feels like naive resistance to inevitable progress. But “inevitable” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Inevitable for whom? Inevitable according to whom?

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How to Make Websites That Will Require Lots of Your Time and Energy - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

  1. Install Stuff Indiscriminately From npm
  2. Pick a Framework Before You Know You Need One
  3. Always, Always Require a Compilation Step

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Toolmen | A Working Library

Engaging with AI as a technology is to play the fool—it’s to observe the reflective surface of the thing without taking note of the way it sends roots deep down into the ground, breaking up bedrock, poisoning the soil, reaching far and wide to capture, uproot, strangle, and steal everything within its reach. It’s to stand aboveground and pontificate about the marvels of this bright new magic, to be dazzled by all its flickering, glittering glory, its smooth mirages and six-fingered messiahs, its apparent obsequiousness in response to all your commands, right up until the point when a sinkhole opens up and swallows you whole.

👏👏👏

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Keeping up appearances | deadSimpleTech

Looking at LLM usage and promotion as a cultural phenomenon, it has all of the markings of a status game. The material gains from the LLM (which are usually quite marginal) really aren’t why people are doing it: they’re doing it because in many spaces, using ChatGPT and being very optimistic about AI being the “future” raises their social status. It’s important not only to be using it, but to be seen using it and be seen supporting it and telling people who don’t use it that they’re stupid luddites who’ll inevitably be left behind by technology.

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In 2025, venture capital can’t pretend everything is fine any more – Pivot to AI

Here is the state of venture capital in early 2025:

  • Venture capital is moribund except AI.
  • AI is moribund except OpenAI.
  • OpenAI is a weird scam that wants to burn money so fast it summons AI God.
  • Nobody can cash out.

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