
# AI Changes Everything

At the moment I'm [working on a new project](/2025/3/31/leaving/).
Even over the last two months, the way I do this has changed profoundly.
Where I used to spend most of my time in Cursor, I now mostly use [Claude
Code](https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code), almost entirely
hands-off.

Do I program any faster?  Not really.  But it feels like I've gained 30%
more time in my day because the machine is doing the work.  I alternate
between giving it instructions, reading a book, and reviewing the changes.
If you would have told me even just six months ago that I'd prefer being
an engineering lead to a virtual programmer intern over hitting the keys
myself, I would not have believed it.  I can go can make a coffee, and
progress still happens.  I can be at the playground with my youngest while
work continues in the background.  Even as I'm writing this blog post,
Claude is doing some refactorings.

While all this is happening, I've found myself reflecting a lot on what AI
means to the world and I am becoming increasingly optimistic about our
future.  It's obvious now that we're undergoing a tremendous shift.  AI is
out of the bottle, and there's no putting it back.  Even if we halted all
progress today, froze the weights, halted the training, the systems
already out there would still reshape how we live, work, learn, and
communicate to one another.

What however took longer to accept is just how *profound* that change
really is.  As an engineer coming from a world of deterministic things,
who deeply values the craft of engineering, to accept the messiness of
what agents are doing took a while to digest.  It took me a while to even
warm up to tool usage by AI in the first place — just two years ago I was
convinced [AI might kill my wife](/2023/2/17/the-killing-ai/).  In
those two years however we've come incredibly far.  We have reached the
point where even if we stopped here (and there is no indication we will)
AI is already a new substrate for a lot of new innovation, ideas and
creations and I'm here for it.  It has moved beyond being a curious tool.

Never before have I seen a technology surface in every day life so
quickly, so widely.  Smartphones adoption felt slow in comparison.  Today
I can't finish a commute or coffee without spotting someone chatting with
ChatGPT.  I've had conversations with baristas, hairdressers, parents at
the playground — people who aren't what I would consider “tech-savvy” —
telling me how AI changed the way they write letters, search for recipes,
help their kids with homework, or translate documents.  The ripple effect
is already massive. And still, the majority of the world hasn't touched
these tools yet.  Entire communities, professions, and economies are yet
to begin exploring their transformation.

That's what makes this moment feel so strange — half revolutionary, half
prelude.  And yet, oddly, there are so many technologists who are
holdouts.  How could techies reject this change?  Thomas Ptacek's piece
“[My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts](https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/)” really resonated with me.  It
takes a humorous stab at the push against AI that is taking place from my
very circles.  Why is it that so many people I've respected in tech for
years — engineers, open source contributors — are the ones most resistant
to what's happening?  We've built something beyond what we imagined, and
instead of being curious, many are dismissive and denying its
capabilities.  What is that?

Of course the implications are vast and real and the rapid development
forces big questions.  What does this mean for the education of our
children?  If AI can teach, explain, and personalize lessons better than a
classroom of thirty ever could, what becomes of schools as we know them?
And if kids grow up expecting to interact with intelligence — not just
absorb content — how do we teach them to reason, create, and collaborate
in ways that leverage this power without becoming dependent on it?

On the global stage, there are also ramifications that seem more
fundamental than in previous cycles.  It does not feel like the rise of
search engines or social media, where the rest of the world was satisfied
with being a consumer of US infrastructure.  This feels more like the
invention of the steam engine.  Once it existed, there was no future
without it.  No country could afford to stay on the sidelines.  But steam
machines also became quickly commoditized and there was plenty of
competition of manufacturers.  It was just too obvious of a technological
leap.  With AI, every nation, every corporation will want its own models,
its own control, its own stake in the future.

And so, as I alternate between delegating tasks to Claude and reading
something thoughtful in between, I can't help but feel excited about being
there when we're at the beginning of something irreversible and expansive.

I understand why it's tempting to be cynical or fearful.  For sure the job
of programmers and artists will change, but they won't vanish.  I feel
like all my skills that I learned as a programmer are more relevant than
ever, just with a new kind of tool. Likewise the abundance of AI generated
art also makes me so much more determined that I want to hire an excellent
designer as soon as I can.  People will always value well crafted
products.  AI might raise the bar for everybody all at once, but it's the
act of careful deliberation and very intentional creation that sets you
apart from everybody else.

Sure, I may have good personal reasons to be optimistic.  But the more
time I spend with these tools, the more I believe that optimism is the
more reasonable stance for everyone.  AI can dramatically increase human
agency when used well.  It can help us communicate across cultures.  It
can democratize access to knowledge.  It can accelerate innovation in
medicine, science, and engineering.

Right now it's messy and raw, but the path is clear: we are no longer just
using machines, we are now working with them.  And while it's early, I
think we'll look back at this decade the way past generations looked at
electricity or the printing press — not as a curiosity, but as the moment
when everything changed.

I encourage you not meet that moment with cynicism or fear: meet it with
curiosity, responsibility and the conviction that this future will be
bright and worth embracing.
