It has only been about a week and a half since it happened, yet I still feel where I was first bit.
The thing is…...it doesn’t hurt. It feels great. Incredible to be honest.
Before we continue, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. LLMs including generative AI are disruptive technologies. How people feel about them will vary based on personal experience or what they have been told. It will be society’s greatest question for the next century on how someone feels about AI. How will we transform it? How will it transform us? This is the closest thing to a new religion taking over the entire world at once. Just like religion, you measure your moral code against it and determine whether it matches your values of who you are and what you want to be known for. That is for you to decide and for no one else.
My views on AI are ever evolving and not something I am locked into. A few months ago, I would put up my nose to use it for anything other than generating silly photos to share in group chats. Today it is a very different story.
I had been hearing about Claude in the news a lot lately. Something felt different about the way people talked about this one. I’ve used Grok, ChatGPT, Copilot and Google Gemini for basic dumb things. Generating AI images to make bad jokes, looking up something or needing a math equation answered. I wasn’t using AI to its full potential because I didn’t trust it enough. I kept it at a distance, forcing myself to still do things the long way.
So, I started with AI at work. My day job uses a version of Microsoft Copilot that integrates into everything. I began having it review my work emails and providing data off of what it found. Breaking down charts for things that would have taken an employee several days to complete. I validated the information was accurate and was able to rapidly improve my day-to-day operations. I feel more efficient than ever and confident that I am actually using tools the company provides in a productive manner. At this point it sounds like I am a robot or an ad for AI, I can confidently tell you I am not and no AI was used to make this post.
That is where that moral code comes in. I don’t use AI to write words for me when I want to speak. There are times I do not want to speak or reiterate something that was already said so I allow AI to take care of that for me. A different department sends an email regarding a notice that needs to be shared with the group? AI can rewrite that email to describe the contents of the notice. I’ve saved time, but that is where other people fail. They let AI rewrite the email and never review the content for themselves. In a later meeting, that person is going to be lost when actual discussion on the topic is occurring.
There are 2 simple rules that you must live by with AI.
Trust, but verify.
Never replace your conscious with AI.
Keeping these 2 guardrails for yourself will keep you on the right path when working with AI. Validate what you are being told the same way you do in your daily life. If someone says a concert is sold out, are you not going to look up if tickets are available yourself? If AI tells you there are 9 planets, are you going to question it or ask it to name every planet? You should. Because there are 8.
I decided to jump into Claude for my personal hobbies and give it a chance. Claude Code was in the headlines, and I wanted to try it out for myself. I began using it to code an idle wrestling game. I have very basic coding knowledge but nothing to get me through an entire game myself for the web. I began learning more about databases, deployments and how GitHub works. Claude took care of the technical aspects of it and gave me a working demo while I worked on the layout, gameplay and design. I was in control every step of the way and could manifest my vision only to the best of my imagination. Everything felt so easy and effortless. Nothing seemed impossible anymore. I could build anything and use it for myself. I started looking into APIs and things I could tap into. I have a lot of app ideas that I will be able to bring to life because of this amazing tool.
At the same time, I have to recognize that these creations do not hold the same value as something created by a team of individuals. The same way a lucha mask manufactured on an assembly line does not hold the same value as a handcrafted lucha mask from Mexico.
Should that deter me from getting better or learning more to improve myself? No and will not.