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Tuesday 7th of July 2026
The uses of AI—are they all bad?
Well, is not even close to skynet. That’s a good sign.
While you could say that in the midst of the interpretive chaos that came with AI usage, everyone formed their own idea of what it means, what it does, and what it's for, I've seen plenty of people use it wrong and mess up their work, while others use it to improve and upgrade their own code.
One of those cases is a danger. You lose control and traceability over what's being done with the code itself. In the second case, the person knows exactly what's going on with the code and what each line means.
I can't criticize either case. I'm also an artist. OUCH! That's where it really hurts. Before, you could make between $100 and $500 for a self-published book cover if it also included editorial design. In this case, AI wreaked havoc. You could say that when the line between assistance and automated self-design blurs, that's when the problems start.
AI has been a recurring topic lately. The critics have a point, and in many cases, so do the users. I don't use AI (don't laugh) except to chat about nonsense. What I don't do is use the Big Tech ones. I simply have one installed on my home server and added what I needed to use it from my phone. Basically, it's completely private and doesn't destroy the planet over dumb questions and stupid jokes. It's just an assistant that every now and then helps me with some household task, always private and upgradable if needed. It runs on low resources and literally doesn't cause problems.
I've followed this whole thing since day one because the damage can reach all of us, but I know that in the design field it's caused devastation, so I can't defend any technology that eliminates jobs.
Is technology crap, or are the people making it even bigger crap than you think?
Quick answer: The people making it ONLY WANT MONEY, and just like with open-pit mining, they don't hold back on trashing the environment to achieve those goals. As a GNU user, I know you can train a language model at a low cost and give it, for example, a sales assistant use case.
At that point, it simply works because it sends the hot lead to the salesperson and wears them out less with insecure clients asking for stupid stuff or just browsing without a penny in their pocket.
I could give multiple examples of why AI works in some cases and sucks in others, but the generalized hatred is so strong that the explanation itself gets diluted.
The truth is, many AI users—as I've said a thousand times—are using it to put food on the table. Oops. That's where my arguments and those of many others go straight down the toilet. You can't really question that when it comes down to that specific purpose, it's hard in every sense to criticize the user.
Same goes for the guy who, far from using it to fire employees, used it to improve his workflow—I already gave an example—and reduce the stress the employee goes through.
Of course, what we see overwhelmingly is the chicken-and-egg dilemma on social media, which is already at least 40% AI-driven by the users themselves. This is where I criticize: "Do we really need this, and the resource waste, for a shitty reel?" I still don't have an answer for that…
I'd like to know which side of the AI issue you're on. Although chances are, you're in one of these segments: the one who already thinks I'm an asshole, and the one who thinks an analysis has validity given the circumstances.
I hope, kind reader, that you enjoyed the post.
A big greeting from Argentina to whoever reads this.