Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI
What Reality Are You Living In?
This is Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI—my semi-regular discussion of the recent emergence AI and its impact on design, technology, and life. Thanks for reading.
With a technology like AI, it’s hard to know what’s real, what’s marketing, and where this is really going. Over the past year I’ve mostly observed and tried to make sense of it all.
The first installment in this series is my attempt to catalog the the different “realities” people seem to be living in when it comes to AI. If nothing else, to get my arms around the chaos to find where I stand.
AI is the future—an industry-defining technology that will change the world
This is the eye of the hurricane, the center of the hype and dominant Silicon Valley narrative. Execs, investors, and VCs see AI as a generational leap, like the iPhone was in 2007. The message is clear—AI will change everything.
Last month, OpenAI closed a $40 billion funding deal, the largest private funding round in history, promising to “pave the way toward AGI that benefits all of humanity”. AGI, as in Artificial General Intelligence, the new term I’ve had to learn given the goal posts have moved beyond what we used to understand as AI.
$40 billion. A number this big is almost impossible to wrap my head around.
Of course, this version of reality is the one aggressively being sold to raise more capital. Whether this holds up is a different story. Ed Zitron, a sharp critic of the current hype cycle, questions whether the business models actually work or if the technology even does what it claims.
If these promises don’t materialize, what happens to the economy that’s built on top of them? What incentives do these companies have to act in anyone’s interest but their own? And given this technology is predicated reshape the world, what happens if they’re right? Who’s accountable if they’re wrong?
AI is a powerful tool—fascinating, but not magic
The next ring out from the center is where the rest of the tech industry lives—from LinkedIn thought leaders to us worker bees. This is where builders are exploring AI’s practical potential. Some push the hype. Others are testing its limits.
There’s real excitement about AI accelerating workflows, augmenting creativity, and reimagining product development. Karri Saarinen, founder of Linear, shares his perspective on AI lifting the skill level of product teams. Claire Vo, CPO at LaunchDarkly, talks about the death of traditional product management. Jorge Arango, information architect, reflects on the power of small, AI-augmented teams.
Beyond the chatter is where prototypes are built, tested, and discussed. From Cursor to v0 to Lovable and beyond, LLM tools are already changing how we build and think in tech.
But this reality assumes equal access. What about workers outside tech hubs? The under-resourced, the overworked, the digitally excluded? In a capitalist system, what happens when a tool can do the same job for half the cost of a person? We talk a lot about productivity, but not much about equity.
AI is a capitalistic tool—amplifying inequality through automation
Zoom out again and you’ll find the most critical perspective. Many artists, activists, and marginalized folks see AI as a new mechanism for extraction—stealing creative labor, displacing workers, and reinforcing systemic biases. All under the guise of “innovation”.
LLMs were trained on massive datasets scraped from human-made content across the internet. Without control or regulation. Without asking permission. And now that the damage is done, near-perfect replicas of that labor are a few prompts away.
In queer and creative spaces I’m part of, the morality of these systems comes up constantly. A recent study by Queen Mary University of London found creative workers increasingly anxious about how generative AI is impacting their job security, value, and consent. Years ago, design leader Mike Monteiro has famously highlighted the real, life-threatening harm inflicted on marginalized people justified as “edge cases” by big tech. Has anything changed since then?
If this is how we got here, what reason do we have to trust that the same people will get it right this time?
AI is noise—useless features and weird-looking memes
Then there’s the outer ring, the furthest cohort from the angry beehive, the disaffected consumer. Because technology is so personal, we see these edge effects in our everyday apps and feeds. Here, AI is neither revolution nor threat—it’s just noise. Pointless features, algorithmic junk, and a constant hum of gimmicky content.
Every app seems to offer AI features no one asked for. Gemini asks to show my unread emails. Spotify has an AI DJ that talks to me. Instagram has AI in its search, for what exactly? Are these technologies solving real user problems?
If the features are forgettable, the feeds are louder. Everyone’s witnessed the Studio Ghibli craze from ChatGPT-4o’s image model, with anime portraits going viral across social media. In this reality, AI is like fast fashion—producing soulless knockoffs not because people want to honor the source material, but because it’s trending.
And it’s not only cute, harmless images. Generative AI is producing politically-charged propaganda. This low-quality content some call “AI slop” is flooding digital platforms, blurring reality and fabrication. Such content is often driven by profit motives while sidestepping accountability.
And yet, in this outermost reality, far from the eye of the hurricane, this noise is shaping culture. AI now generates search results, dating profiles, and movie scripts. It’s not just noise, it’s the new baseline we’re living in. The resulting brain rot is real. In an endlessly-scrolling virtual world, does reality and authenticity hold value anymore?
So, now what?
It’s clear we live in overlapping realities—algorithms, belief systems, economic incentives, and imagined futures. They all shape how we see and move through the world.
It’s not about deciding which reality is real. They all are, in some way. The better question is, which one holds the most truth? The most promise? Which vision of the future is worth moving toward, building for, and believing in?
If nothing else, I’m trying to stay curious. To keep watching, questioning, and listening. Because if we let a single reality take over, we’ll miss the chance to shape something better.
