On Usage of AI

When I am creating things in my personal life, be it code, designs or even the occasional blog post on here, I actively avoid using generative AI to do so. In the following paragraphs I want to share the reasons for that.

Firstly, it's absolutely clear why using AI is so appealing to us. It's just a lot easier. Literally as I'm writing this I have to think really hard about how to mold the thoughts in my head into coherent sentences. And this is not exactly easy, for me at least. So why not outsource this process to the machine? Because it literally causes us to become dumber. When writing a text you get better a communicating your thoughts, something that we as Gen Z really struggle with. When coding by hand you have to make design decisions, step through the code in your head and think really hard about possible edge cases. When you let Claude one shot the correct solution and you think you fully understand what it did, do you really think it's the same? When you stop going to the gym you are going to lose all of your muscle, why would it be different for these mental skills.

Secondly I personally just don't enjoy consuming AI content. Social Media Platforms like X and the Internet as a whole have become a lot less enjoyable as a result of AI slop becoming so prevalent. When googling for technical blog posts, it has become almost impossible to find ones written by humans. Guys, if I wanted AI to explain a concept to me, I WOULD HAVE JUST ASKED IT MYSELF. Some people really seem to believe that Gen-AI is some sort of unknown technology that only they have access to. That's just wrong. ChatGPT was released in 2022. The wow-factor has long worn off, or at least it should have. When a person posts ai generated content it has this subtle undertone of: I could have taken the time to create something myself but since this is just for you, this slop is good enough. It's kind of insulting. I got this point from this Youtube Video by Ultralativ which I really recommend. It's in german though.

Some say that they only use AI to polish their texts and to get rid of language errors at the end. Personally I think this is totally valid and I also use it that way in professional settings. But outside of that I would still advocate against it. Sure, we all want to present ourselves in the best way possible, but still. Being human is more important than being perfect. In a world where AI-content is abundant a typo or an awkward phrasing almost becomes a seal of quality.

That's enough yapping. Thank you for reading this far. As of early 2026 the AI hysteria is still going but I'm optimistic that more people will begin to realize that flooding the world with AI-content is not making it a better place.