exo : blah

Yes, I know, it is 2026 and no one needs another AI take but this all popped into my head on a bike ride and I must expel it.

In short, generative AI is not for me. This is not based on extensive, or really any, use, it is more about how I want to do things.

I know you can do good things with it, I have seen good things done with it, things that otherwise would likely not have happened.

I just don’t want to.

For the most part I enjoy my job. It is interesting and challenging in the right ways. Yes, there can sometimes be tedious bits to it but even those are enjoyable in a meditative way and I don’t think ridding myself of them would make me a better developer. I expect for some measures AI might make me more productive but it’s hard to say without putting in the effort to get good with the tools. What I am fairly sure of is it would not make me a happier developer. In the past I’ve managed people and it did not agree with me. I do not think that managing a machine is likely to be an improvement. On top of all this I am very much a figure things out by writing code so having a machine do this for me seems more likely to result in oversight and error.

The same goes for any other aspect that I might employ generative AI for. For me the act of making a thing is partly about noticing. If you are taking a photo it is because something has caught your attention, and in order for that to happen you have to be paying attention. Writing is the same. You have to interrogate your thoughts and in the process understand the reasoning or feelings behind them. To do this requires, for me at least, spending time with things and that is one of the things generative AI is designed to reduce.

There’s some reference to the bicycle for the mind metaphor with regard to these tools and, to me, it fundamentally misunderstands the what a bike is. Yes, it is an efficient means of getting from a to b but it is under your own power; let us ignore e-bikes here. More than that though, it is a machine for moving through the world. You cannot ride a bike without being aware of and understanding your surroundings. There is no setting a direction of travel and leaving the rest to the machine, it is a stream of decisions, some of which may become unconscious with time, but no part of the ride can happen without input. For me it’s this that makes bicycles great. You see so much from a bicycle but at a pace you can appreciate it.

I learn so much about my area from riding. I see the shops that close, or open, when the fields are dry, where the flooding happens, which towns are busy, where the paths go and when they are good to ride. I don’t want to skim over all that to get to my destination because it’s in those details that the joy is found.

I want the journey and generative AI does not.