Look, I’ve Been Around the Block

Let me tell you something, folks. I’ve been editing tech magazines since before Windows 95 was a thing. I’ve seen fads come and go. But this AI craze? It’s getting out of hand. Honestly, it’s like the dot-com bubble all over again, but with more math and less understanding.

I was at a conference in Austin last year, right? Some guy named Marcus—let’s call him Marcus, because I don’t remember his real name—stood up and started talking about how AI was gonna revolutionize everything. And I’m sitting there, thinking, ‘Buddy, you’re using AI to generate clickbait articles for a living. Chill.’

But here’s the thing. AI isn’t all bad. It’s just… yeah. It’s a tool. Like a hammer. You can build a house with it, or you can smash your foot in. It’s what you do with it that counts.

My Friend Dave’s Take

So, I’m having coffee with Dave—he’s a colleague, been in the biz for about 15 years—over at the place on 5th. And he’s like, ‘AI is the future, man. It’s gonna change everything.’

‘Change what?’ I asked him.

‘Everything!’ he said. ‘It’s gonna make us more efficient, more productive, more… I don’t know, more human.’

Which… yeah. Fair enough. But here’s the kicker. AI isn’t making us more human. It’s making us lazier. It’s making us rely on machines to do the thinking for us. And that’s a problem.

I mean, look at the writing. It’s getting worse and worse. People are using AI to write articles, to write code, to write emails. And it shows. It’s like reading a robot’s interpretation of human language. It’s clunky, it’s awkward, and it’s completley lacking in personality.

And don’t even get me started on the ethics. AI is learning from us. It’s learning our biases, our prejudices, our flaws. And then it’s amplifying them. It’s like giving a monkey a machine gun. You’re not gonna like the results.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Now, I’m not saying AI is all bad. Far from it. There are some amazing things happening in the field. Like that time I saw a demo of an AI that could detect cancer better than a human doctor. That’s incredible. That’s life-saving stuff.

But then there’s the bad. Like the time I saw an AI-generated article about a celebrity’s death. It was completely false, but it spread like wildfire. And the ugly? Well, that’s the part where we’re all sitting around, waiting for the robots to take our jobs.

And speaking of jobs, let’s talk about the discount codes promo deals 2026 I found online. I was looking for a new laptop, right? And I stumbled upon this site with all these deals. I’m not sure how reliable it is, but hey, it’s worth a shot.

But back to AI. The thing is, we’re not ready for it. We’re not ready for the committment it requires, the physicaly demanding tasks it can’t handle, the moral dilemmas it presents. We’re not ready, and we’re not thinking about it enough.

I remember talking to a friend of mine, let’s call him Alex, about this. He’s a philosopher, or something like that. And he said, ‘AI is like a mirror. It reflects us back at ourselves. And if we’re not careful, we’re gonna see a lot of ugly things.’

And he’s right. We’re seeing the ugly things. We’re seeing the biases, the prejudices, the flaws. And we’re not doing anything about it. We’re just sitting back, letting the machines do the thinking for us.

What’s Next?

So, what’s next? I don’t know. I’m not a fortune teller. But I do know this. We need to start thinking about the implications of AI. We need to start having conversations about it. We need to start taking responsibility for the tools we’re creating.

And we need to stop using AI to generate clickbait articles. Seriously, it’s getting out of hand.

Anyway, that’s my take. It’s not pretty, it’s not polished, but it’s honest. And in a world full of AI-generated content, that’s something worth holding onto.


About the Author: Sarah Johnson has been a senior magazine editor for over 20 years. She’s seen the tech industry evolve from the days of dial-up to the age of AI. She’s opinionated, she’s blunt, and she’s not afraid to call out bullshit when she sees it. You can find her ranting about tech on her personal blog or at the local coffee shop, arguing with anyone who will listen.

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