You've Ben Warned

Well, here we are again. It's always such a pleasure.

If, in the past 2 years, you've visited LinkedIn, read a tech blog, or had the misfortune of hearing the word "agentic", you'll know that there's a real shortage of young, white, male professionals talking about AI. I'm here to fill that gap.

For those unfamiliar, AI, or "Artificial Intelligence", is most commonly known as the precursor to Skynet and the spiritual successor of the Furby. It first emerged in the late 2010s on the website Omegle.com, but quickly grew and by 2024 had complete dominance of the cultural zeitgeist. It's most commonly used for image generation and writing emails, but it has also shown promising results in raising unemployment and reducing children's critical thinking.

Now that we've had a few years to observe the effects of AI on our society, let's chat about the biggest pros and cons.

Pro: Scaling up bandwidth synergy

To be totally honest I don't know what this means, but I keep hearing people talk about using AI to "scale up bandwidth for win-win value-add", or "maximizing synergy through circling back on paradigm shifts", and if a lot of people are talking about it, it must be super helpful. Therefore, it makes the list.

Con: Language

I now have to explain problems in full sentences so AI can understand what I'm trying to say, instead of the much more efficient "help" slack message to my team and they already know what I'm working on.

Pro: GPUs

For many years companies like Nvidia have been developing state of the art GPUs (Graphing Processing Units) for essentially no reason at all. Gamers discovered these chips and found they could be moderately helpful for their games, but ultimately that has been a net deficit for society. With the advent of AI these GPUs are finally being used for something useful, meaning they're now hoarded by large corporations and too expensive for lowly gamers to waste on having fun.

Con: Art

My dad has decided that, for every single person he knows, he will use AI to create a birthday poem for them. The poems are bad. His delivery is bad. Sometimes he goes as far as generating AI songs for people. The songs are, unfortunately, bangers, but the lyrics are bad. My dad is single-handedly destroying the music industry.

Pro: Tough Conversations

Have you ever found yourself suddenly confronted with a question you don't want to answer? I've found that it's super easy to answer all of my kid's tough questions about life, ethics, and the human body, if I just type that question into AI and play the response through their handy voice feature. This has really improved my son's relationship with the people around him and means I don't have to talk to him as much.

Con: Chat

People have started using the word "chat" in everyday conversation to avoid saying "AI." I'm not technically a boomer, but my adherence to 1960's slang might as well make me one, and I am sick and tired of people saving a single syllable and sounding insane when they say "let's ask chat." What are we doing here? What's going on?

Well, I've covered all the pros and cons, so I guess the newsletter has to end now. Thanks for reading and for always responding so kindly. You guys are the best, and our relationship isn't parasocial so I really mean that.

- Ben