Make Peace with My Bias Against AI

Ever since the topic of AI grew beyond technical debates, mostly in academic circles, my skepticism toward several aspects of it has increased. At the same time, I never stopped following the field or trying to understand certain details. I actually believe there are some areas that aren’t widely explored but deserve my attention over the next year or so, especially when it comes to math itself (algebra, calculus, statistics, discrete math, etc).

My point here is that two things ended up being neglected: learning the basics, and the overhyped promises that made a lot of people lose money on useless stuff.

Most of the time, I could call myself a hypocrite regarding my opinions on AI vs. software development, and in a way, I am. These days, I’ve added so many toolsets, agents, and prompts to genuinely improve my workflow that I’m becoming a heavy user of these tools, mostly everything related to Anthropic.

Still, some things keep haunting me. What’s the cognitive impact of all this on me? What’s the real trade-off here? Those questions have been on my mind. However, one of the reasons I started adopting better processes using AIs was both my job, where I’ve been strongly encouraged to use them, and my personal project, Solo, which, as of this post, already has 40 stars on GitHub. I’ve never had that many stars before, lol.

That leads me to the second point. This massive use of AIs has allowed me to think about how to invest the extra time I’m gaining in things I actually want to do, like continuing my studies in Rust, algorithms, math, reading, and best of all, spending more time with my family. That has been a huge improvement.

In short, and maybe this sounds obvious to some, though it wasn’t to me until recently, being able to automate tasks and, more importantly, invest that saved time in things that improve me as a person has been a real game changer in how I see these tools. It also answered another question I had. Since everyone is using AIs to develop tools, complete tasks, and even make money, maybe the next phase is to direct some of that energy toward improving one’s own intellect. That might be the path to becoming truly free from any real dependency on AI. Because even if it stops working one day, I’ll still know what to do without it.

Anyway, just some thoughts from the past few days, a bit of hypocrisy, a few realizations, and some peace made along the way. See you next time!