Re: Politics
Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2026 4:30 pm
In all seriousness, AI is the way of the future for software engineering. There's no doubt about it.
Anyway, now that I have my Claude Max account, I started brainstorming on some ideas I've had for years, but didn't have the energy to work on. In 2 days, I've gotten a lot out of it, from overall planning and documentation. I'm having a crazy brainstorming session with it, going into great tangents, and then it documents everything with me and I have it organizing a plan. That was the one thign holding me back, I didn't want to have to document everything. This leaves a lot of cognitive space available for other things.
There's a lot to like and dislike about AI. The data centers and resource hogging is atrocious. But there's ways to use AI on a local computer and not send your data to a datacenter. I think as this shapes out you'll start to see the trend of local LLMs. There's already applications that do this, the only thing really holding it back is processing power. But processing power is kinda cheap. You could do real damage with a MacBook Pro with 128gb of RAM, which isn't really that crazy or that far out of reach, if you think about it. What's been holding back computer sales has been the fact that having more power doesn't mean shit, because it's just too much. Local LLMs kind of change the game there. Unfortunately, the stupid war with Iran is going to fuck all this up, so we'll see how that affects this. But there's already a ton of models to download that are open source, along with those apps that can load them with ease. Today, on your machine you could start doing this, for normal shit. You want a recipe? Learn some music theory? Write a crappy book? It's all there, ready to use, available right now for you and you alone.
This AI shit is like the internet. It's here, most people don't understand it, but eventually they will and it will be everywhere. It already is, you just don't know it yet. You can be a curmudgeon and a luddite, that's fine, that's your choice. I'm OK with embracing it. With the internet, there's some ethics that need to be established. If you have AI do everything for you, you stop thinking. If you're young, you have AI do all your work, you're not going to learn shit. You have to still engage. Think of it as a partner, or an assistant. Same thing professionally. It can't be the driver.
Now, if AI could actually think for itself, that's different. We're all fucked. Maybe that day will come? I dunno. We're all just players in this game. Whatever happens is out of our control. Best to understand it, use it wisely.
Anyway, now that I have my Claude Max account, I started brainstorming on some ideas I've had for years, but didn't have the energy to work on. In 2 days, I've gotten a lot out of it, from overall planning and documentation. I'm having a crazy brainstorming session with it, going into great tangents, and then it documents everything with me and I have it organizing a plan. That was the one thign holding me back, I didn't want to have to document everything. This leaves a lot of cognitive space available for other things.
There's a lot to like and dislike about AI. The data centers and resource hogging is atrocious. But there's ways to use AI on a local computer and not send your data to a datacenter. I think as this shapes out you'll start to see the trend of local LLMs. There's already applications that do this, the only thing really holding it back is processing power. But processing power is kinda cheap. You could do real damage with a MacBook Pro with 128gb of RAM, which isn't really that crazy or that far out of reach, if you think about it. What's been holding back computer sales has been the fact that having more power doesn't mean shit, because it's just too much. Local LLMs kind of change the game there. Unfortunately, the stupid war with Iran is going to fuck all this up, so we'll see how that affects this. But there's already a ton of models to download that are open source, along with those apps that can load them with ease. Today, on your machine you could start doing this, for normal shit. You want a recipe? Learn some music theory? Write a crappy book? It's all there, ready to use, available right now for you and you alone.
This AI shit is like the internet. It's here, most people don't understand it, but eventually they will and it will be everywhere. It already is, you just don't know it yet. You can be a curmudgeon and a luddite, that's fine, that's your choice. I'm OK with embracing it. With the internet, there's some ethics that need to be established. If you have AI do everything for you, you stop thinking. If you're young, you have AI do all your work, you're not going to learn shit. You have to still engage. Think of it as a partner, or an assistant. Same thing professionally. It can't be the driver.
Now, if AI could actually think for itself, that's different. We're all fucked. Maybe that day will come? I dunno. We're all just players in this game. Whatever happens is out of our control. Best to understand it, use it wisely.