I still remember the first day someone told me about ChatGPT. Not that it was all that long ago. I was immediately struck by what it could do, while simultaneously nervous about the repercussions. It's a few years later, and not much has changed.

I see post after post written about AI, and they almost all exclusively fall into one of two camps. Either, AI is amazing, and it will make you so productive you can hardly stand it... Or, it's so evil that the world will end tomorrow. The irony is not lost on me that most of these articles are generated by AI.

Like most things in life, AI is fine. As long as it's understood as a tool and used in moderation. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, AI has saved me countless hours when debugging some syntax or figuring out where my YAML indentation has gone wrong. Do I use it to help me with some grammar? Sure. Has, it made me happy to not ask a question on Stack Overflow and risk being virtually tarred and feathered? You better believe it!

That said, it's not without its danger and warts.

What could possibly go wrong?

Vibe code a whole web app... That'll be fun to maintain and fix down the road. And I'm confident there will be no security vulnerabilities. Hopefully my sarcasm is screaming through.

I've got a couple of friends who are high school teachers. They've been at it for a couple of decades now. They assure me the brain rot is real. Half their students are turning in assignments that are 100% AI generated. We now have an entire generation that reaches for AI, long before they ever think of thinking. I mean, I can only imagine the kind of temptation that would have been for me in my high school years.

Where do we go from here?

AI is certainly not going anywhere any time soon. It's ruffled the feathers of almost every industry. And most people in leadership mistakenly view it as a silver bullet to fix all of a company's bottom-line woes. That leaves real lives in its wake.

That means we have to adjust and learn how to leverage, but not abuse AI.

I definitely don't know the future. No one does. But I'm confident in the beauty of imperfection. My favorite pair of jeans is the one that's worn in. I like when a home looks lived in. I prefer rough edges. I often long for the "old days" when websites all looked very different and had lots of personality. Long before Tailwind made everything uniform. Like an old, familar pair of jeans... But I'm just an old developer yelling at the clouds.

🥂 Even so, cheers to humanity. Let's keep things human in 2026.