Dear XYZ,

in this piece “AI” refers to LLMs and the “agents” built on top of such language models

I feel like opinions around AI usage is polarizing into two encampments. On one end, you have the AI maximalists who believe that AI is the inevitable future and are trying to use it in any way that they can. On the opposite end, some would oppose any use of it.

I think both sides each have their own rationale for justifying their positions, but that’s not what I’m interested in writing about today.

As someone who makes things, I’m interested in the tools that we use and how it shapes the things that we make. I often recall the quote misattributed to Marshall McLuhan that goes something along the lines of “we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us”.

I’ve observed that for myself, my comfort around using AI differs quite a lot depending on the task. For instance, I actively use AI for programming and making software, but I can never imagine using AI to write articles like these.

Then again, even for writing software, there are times when I’d rather read and review every line of code even when it’s generated by an AI tool. There’re so many different ways to use the tool that also impacts one’s experience with it.

I think much of it boils down to how much you care about the thing that you’re doing or making, and how that artifact relates to you. btsv is made using AI assistance, but I will go pretty far to say that it wasn’t vibe-coded. I know the code base well, and had a strong hand in shaping all the major design decisions. I’m willing to own both the merits and mistakes in the project, instead of shrugging my shoulders. Because it is a project that I care about, I will make sure that I “paint the back of the fence”. I also want to understand how it works so that I can imagine how to grow it over time.

In physical tools, the tool itself provides a lot of constraints over how something is made. For instance, a Japanese hand saw is going to cut a lot slower than a bandsaw, but in a way it forces you to be a lot more deliberate and careful. The hand saw also offers a lot more control compared to a band saw.

But I’m not sure if using this analogy is applicable for AI. AI is such an amorphous tool, I really wonder if its effects as production tooling will be obvious. It can simultaneously help you learn a lot or nothing at all, depending on your choice. (I’m assuming that you have the volition, but that’s not always true in organizational settings – but that’s a different conversation.)

AI tools can do a lot nowadays, but they can’t desire. And even if they someday were to desire, that doesn’t in any way change how we should desire. Just like how my cat’s desires are parallel to mine and can coexist simultaneously.

I guess our relationship with this powerful tool really boils down to the intentions that we bring to it. It’s like a genie; it reveals the character of its master. If you want to use it to do difficult things, you can. Conversely, you can also use it to avoid doing anything.

Individually, you should be aware of what using AI is doing to you as a person. Is it making you better than you were before? And perhaps more profoundly, is it congruent with how you want to live?

xoxo,
K

Dear XYZ,

I often go back to the idea of “inner necessity” coined by the painter Kandinsky. I understand it as being moved purely by some kind of internal force to act in a particular manner.

I’ve been wanting to write some kind of blog for a while. Recent changes in my life has pushed me to make this a more urgent priority. I have a kid coming, my life is about to change. I’m excited to be a dad but I also know that this period of time before his birth could be crucial for finishing up some personal projects that I’ve always wanted to do.

Another motivation is that I hope to be as truthful as I am here to my child and develop a sense of vulnerable candor. Whether or not this is the best approach for that, I’m not sure. Perhaps one day I’ll share my writings with my kids, although my guess is that they probably won’t be that interested.

And because I like to make tools, I knew that I wanted to write in my own terms. Plus, I knew what I was looking for in a blogging tool. I liked the idea of keeping a blog using a git repo and static site generation (SSG). Wordpress is too much and nowadays with tools like Hugo and Astro you don’t need a live database just for a blog, SSG is sufficient.

However, my past experiences writing through a git repo meant doing so in an IDE. That really wasn’t ideal and was a bit of an overkill. So I thought… what if I combined the best of both worlds by creating a very simple interface which helps me write markdown files into a git repo? By creating abstractions over frameworks like Astro to provide a great writing experience. I hope btsv is a good answer to that.

Ultimately I’m not 100% sure why I did this (does anyone truly know?), but I knew I wanted to, and so I had to. I think that if one doesn’t feed their inner necessity, it will be malnourished, maybe it’ll fade and die. I’m afraid to wake up one day and find that I’m completely hollowed out, with no conviction for doing anything hard or meaningful. Just driftwood floating out in the ocean, completely subject to the whims of the tides.

I don’t believe in spirits, but I think we do have something like a soul… and that if you don’t attend to it, it will wither.

xoxo,
K