I think Daniel Jalkut has captured the AI zeitgeist:

Everybody who's against it is too against it and everybody who's for it is too for it.

And it’s no surprise why. Attention is the internet’s currency and “IT’S COMING FOR YOUR JOBS” sure does drive engagement.

The truth, of course, bears a more moderate tone, where AI is an increasingly useful tool in some domains and for certain tasks, many related to computers and especially programming. In support, I’d like to offer scenarios where I’ve found AI useful. Perhaps these can serve as some inspiration; I’m sure there are many more!

• Illustrating a children’s book
• Negotiating a car purchase
• Recommending books
• Creating calendar events from a soccer schedule spreadsheet
• Dissecting patents
• Brainstorming interview questions
• Identifying plants from photos
• Transcribing private voice notes
• Synthesizing scientific literature e.g. in “deep research” mode
• Replacing traditional search e.g. finding coupons, suggesting adventures, looking up the MSRP of items in a list, learning how something works, determining what forms to file and when, etc.
• Guiding hardware repairs
• Diagnosing pneumonia (subsequently confirmed by x-ray)

But what about writing? No. I subscribe to the idea that writing is thinking and abandoning one’s voice has far deeper consequences than it might appear.

Largely absent from the list is software engineering, not because I don’t find it valuable (quite the opposite, see Trial Inference and a vibe coded animal sounds game as examples), but rather because it’s largely accepted that programming is an ideal domain where AI is proving genuinely useful.

Do today’s best models still hallucinate, produce slop, obsess over goblins, and have terrible intuition? Absolutely; as with all tools it’s important to understand its strengths and weaknesses. The unique challenge with AI is that a weakness a few months ago might not be a weakness today.

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Tags: AI software

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This work by Derek Croote is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0