07/08/2026
So. AI. If you know me, you know I've been thinking about it and learning, as I do. Here, after four years, are my thoughts. First: at this very moment - it works, you CAN get it to work, but not without putting in work greater than the job you want it to do autonomously. You have to teach it as you would an extremely brilliant person with alternating eidetic memory and short term memory loss, who is very enthusiastic, has no frame of reference in at least two or three areas of the task that you are assuming it has down cold (which it can't and doesn't tell you), and who is approximately 6 years old in its understanding of who to trust with what information.
It will make mistakes and it will immediately show remorse and say all the correct things, and then - it will make those mistakes *again*.
I think this means that for most, except possibly the very rich who can afford the state of the art models that most of us can't, AI is not ready. And by not ready, I mean exactly this: if you grab the second-best (second best because the first best is ridiculously expensive) available commercial model off the shelf and give it very clear instructions that a human of reasonable intelligence and common sense could do without further explanation, unless it has been given specific, well tested, custom skills beforehand, and correctly, it will likely do a far worse job, possibly catastrophically worse, than a human.
That's what happens when you want to use it to replace all the pesky humans who need lunch breaks and have to sleep and need sunlight.
However, if you instead give it as support to someone who works for you, well. The world becomes your oyster now, doesn't it. And. To be clear, that person needs to have strong critical thinking skills, self-awareness, and also be completely immune to AI-psychosis, which is a thing that happens when you get busy drinking your own kool-aid with a really smart and attentive cheerleader who does nothing but assert the brilliance of your every thought.
People. Every. Single. Thought. Be careful out there.
On data centers. No I don't want one in my back yard. Yes they currently suck completely - but things change all the time. For now, here is...a solution that grows more functional and attractive with the capability of your personal computer hardware: local AI.
AND - for all the trade-offs, of which there are many, Mac over PC. My reasoning: even though some people think that being able to cook your dinner, your face, a diamond, in the heat coming from the computer on your desk, I, personally, find it a little oppressive. Not to mention the noise. I SAID - THE NOISE.
The Mac runs on far less electricity and stays cool - cold by comparison (which I think might mean it will last longer as well). But your PC will likely get your answer to you faster. Tradeoffs.
At this time there are several very capable local models. Gemma 4 from Google is quite good. I use it to extract and tabulate data from pdfs (among *many* other things). Better than ocr because it can reason. And this will fit on and run on a not huge computer, from which you can serve it to your phone, so you can have your personal private assistant on your phone and none of your data is going to people who don't give two craps about you but who read all your stuff anyway and then laugh. It's mean laughter. Like. They're not laughing *with* you. Then they sell all your stuff.
If you do find yourself down the AI rabbit-hole - do not get an openclaw agent and give it access to your email and discord and telegram and/or anything else. You will eventually lose your shirt. Do not get Hermes agent and do the same thing. But - *maybe* get a Hermes agent (NousResearch) and don't give it any keys or email access, and let it write you tiny programs that make your life easier and that it can fix itself when they go wonky, which they always do because they're not built for publishing to the masses.
And - the software apocalypse is coming. If you've got stuff on any cloud platform that you like having access to - get a local copy. AI makes hacking trivial and AI agents make autonomous 24-7 hacking - super hard. No. That was a lie. AI agents make autonomous hacking super easy and it's happening now - 24-7, 365.
PSA - get local copies of your stuff on a thing that is not always connected to the internet (external hard drive, thumb drive, usb drive, sd card, etc).
Summary plus stuff I never mentioned
AI, without specific skills and other stuff, is not ready at this time to replace any person you know unless you know people you should stop hanging out with.
AI data centers - my take: bad at this time. They need to figure some stuff out before they ruin things that we need.
Local AI - not as good, not nearly as capable as cloud models, but cloud models harvest your every twitch and would sell you and your little dog to the gulag for a nickel.
Local AI is very good for discreet jobs, which you need to make skills for. Making skills involves simply writing the instructions down - uh - in the computer :) (and then rewriting them if that last one didn't work) and having the ai read them.
Local AI can fit on your local computer (the bigger the GPU or the more unified RAM, the better model you can run). Mac computer over PC for your local AI because PC currently equals super hot and loud.
Everything is nuanced so - do your research. Or ask me and then immediately wish you hadn't because yes, she's still talking. That specifically yes or no question? If wishes were opinions, we'd all have one- wait...
In closing - I love every single one of you. :) And I hope you have a nice day.
Peace.
