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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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It will always be better and cheaper in sixth months.

Meanwhile I've already used it to do things for my startup that I can't even imagine how I'd have paid for otherwise.

I've also had better luck using AI as a disposable coder I can rush to test and let it run into walls rather than hoping my dev team would be able to figure things out organically. The tension of streamlining vs overloading a dev team is always an issue, and I've certainly found human intervention necessary for a great many edge cases that will show up.

Certainly the administrative loads and documentation tracking for what projects are extant and what is viable is helped. In the weirdest sense AI is useful as a stupid conversation partner to sanity check, and it doesn't mind being bullied or rejecting effusive praise.

Meanwhile I've already used it to do things for my startup that I can't even imagine how I'd have paid for otherwise.

Would you mind sharing any examples? I've failed to engage with AI in any meaningful way, not for ideological/luddite reasons, but the simple inertia of doing things the way I've always done them. I'd love to try something new, and don't know where to begin.

Don't really have time to get into it atm but I didn't want to leave you hanging. Just play with it. Try to get it to do stuff. You'll be amazed.

Me too, I haven't really played around with AI for some weird anxiety about not being able to apply it effectively. I'm kind of sticking my head in the sand on AI to avoid thinking about my FOMO.

You can literally just start by asking it how to apply it effectively.

Think of it this way: you've missed out on a bit, sure, but AI progressing so fast right now, that the value you left on the table so far is really insignificant compared to what you can get at any point you decide to jump in.