The Non-AI Edition

AI seems to be everywhere.

It doesn’t matter if you’re working with code, people or biology. The message seems to be the same:

If you’re not using AI you’re falling behind.

For example, my social feeds are filled with people “Vibe Coding” out apps in days, just talking to an LLM. And most of you reading this will probably have heard of the Swedish startup Lovable.

A lot of the content I see on LinkedIn today is AI generated and everyone in the indie app building community are building tools to generate TikTok videos raking in millions of views.

I am no different.

In my quest to make this a great newsletter, I have experimented with AI in my workflow for everything from brainstorming topics, to create an outline to actually writing large parts of it.

AI is clearly a very powerful tool. But it comes with a price. There is something lost when I let AI write 95% of my newsletter. Call it the soul of the piece.

Maybe this will be OK once AI becomes nuanced enough to mimic my style of writing. And maybe I won’t need to write code myself at all. And maybe, just maybe AI will allow me to focus on getting the right content or product in front of the right people.

However, I think there is something even more important that is getting lost right now: The craft.

One of my favorite movies is Wall-E. In it humanity is enslaved by their convenience. All they do is sit in hovering recliners, completely reliant on technology for their every need.

While we’re still far away from that dystopian future, it’s still important to be careful about not becoming lazy in our work.

I used to say that code that doesn’t bring value to the end user is worthless. I still stand by that. But I also think that there is value in actually writing code, regardless of how or even if it will be used!

The act of trying to get three lines of code just right thousands of times is a large part of why I have become really good at making complex topics simple. The overlap to other topics is just that big.

Same goes for writing. My main motivation for starting this newsletter was to become a better thinker. By using AI to write too much of the content AI has now become a crutch that holds me back rather than lift me up.

So what am I going to do about it?

First of all, I will go back to writing this newsletter by hand, starting with this edition (except for checking grammar and spelling). Next week I’ll probably use AI as my editor again, but this edition will be kept pure.

I will also go back to pen and paper for first drafts of mental models and strategy documents, rather than asking AI to generate the drafts.

My code will probably be written by AI to a large extent. Too much of coding today is repetition anyway. I will, however, drop AI as soon as I encounter a problem that I haven’t solved before and I might even go back to doing coding katas.

If you made it this far, I would like you to take three minutes out of your busy day to hit reply and answer these two questions:

How did you like this week’s newsletter compared to previous weeks? Where in your daily work might you be using AI as a crutch? That’s it!

Thank you for being a part of my journey towards becoming a better writer.

/ Viktor