How to play: Some comments in this thread were written by AI. Read through and click flag as AI on any comment you think is fake. When you're done, hit reveal at the bottom to see your score.got it
I have removed a person from a project. Doing their share of work, paying them exactly as agreed. Because they decided to have Claude write 10 pages of feedback on about 5 pages of content I created even after I asked them for clarification. If anyone uses AI in communication, fine. If people think an LLM can express their thoughts better, than they can, ok. No problem. But if I wanted to talk to computers all day long I can already do that. I’ve been doing it close to 40 years now. The reason I work in a team is so I get to connect to actual human beings. Live people, warts and all. If I can’t get that, why would I bother? Again: I have plenty to do talking to computers.
Reasonable piece. I always thought the hope/promise of AI was to make it do the work we don't want to do so that we can enjoy life the way we want to which is typically socializing with humans? I get that it generates so much that if you are reviewing thoughtfully everything it is doing, it can suck you away like being a worker at a conveyor belt, but hopefully that is a short period of growing pains. A related take on staying human in the age of AI: https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/the-lost-subject-ai...
To the chagrin of the unfortunate General Foods corporation, the water flavor enhancement product used at Jones Town was actually Flavor Aid.
And maybe that's a pretty good analogy to what's going on with this post. It contemplates a world of suburban parental neglect and private burrito taxis and lays them at the feet of AI. But these were happening before LLMs burst onto the scene.
In a world of $3,000 rent and $3,000 medication and $3,000 preschool, what do you expect will happen?
> Getting on a video call was eye opening in many ways. Seeing the exhaustion on his whole body.
This describes a non trivial number of my colleagues. What's more concerning is witnessing the cognitive decline, for example struggling to debug straight forward problems[1] and mindlessly copy/pasting stack traces into a chat box. While I'm definitely guilty of the latter I usually resort to that when I'm tired, or just hoping to avoid actually thinking through a problem because I have N other tasks to complete, which really ties back to the whole exhaustion thing.
Anyway thank you for putting this into words and congratulations on your recent fledglings. (I had to Google that one. Bird analogies aren't my strong suit.)
A lot of AI uses get endlessly debated online and outside, but the most shocking to me is that even genuine human interaction is somehow now up for debate, if I'm not interacting with real people then what even is the point of doing anything.
Maybe this is a response to becoming an empty nester. You’re entering the next phase and taking time to reflect.
The American monoculture, especially the “bigger” version you probably see in Texas, gets a little more direct observation when you’re between phases of life.
Right now the monoculture is leaning into heavily using AI in all aspects of life while also outwardly hating it… and also gambling for some reason.
You’ll probably start looking to retirement goals next, but those plans will likely go through phases themselves as grandkids may or may not enter the picture.
This won’t be the last time you have one of these out-of-body type self awareness experiences.
I'm glad for Author to write on the subject but think the article was tough to get through due to undeveloped ideas and too many cliches. I was additionally confused where the Kool Aid thing was going because the "drinking it" phrase originates from LSD/acid tests--mentioned in the wiki [1] page but not the post.
Where do we go from here and what is the intermediate ground of leveraging LLMs and Agentic AI? It's odd for me to read about someone going "all in" on AI--to the point of using it for email with humans--and then having a massive reversal.
I think this is a really interesting case study and temporal snapshot of where we are with AI technologies. I have always been wary|skeptical|cynical of the technology and this is affirming but also just confusing.
I think the phrase is much more widely associated with Jonestown than with the Electric Kool Aid Acid tests. It certainly took off in popular usage after Jonestown.
The wikipedia page you linked for some reason points out that Flavour Aid, rather than Kool Aid, was used at Jonestown, but I don't see how that matters; flavour aid is effectively the same thing, under a less-known brand name.
Nitpick: the acid tests were about spiked Kool-Aid being the point, not blind obedience, so the "uncritical believer" sense really does come from Jonestown. IIRC the vat there was Flavor Aid, but Kool-Aid won the naming fight. Nobody says "drank the Flavor Aid."
The middle ground for me ended up being small, bounded tasks. I use it for test scaffolding, mechanical refactors, and "read this unfamiliar module and tell me what it does", then review every diff. Gotcha: it gets noticeably worse once a session runs long, so I restart with fresh context instead of correcting it. That alone cut my cleanup time a lot.
Curious, did you measure anything before you backed off, or was it more feel? I keep wondering if people who quit would see their output actually drop, or if it just feels slower because reviewing generated code was the hidden cost all along.
Funny thing is, in practice people keep drinking it, just on a monthly plan. We had four people on $20 subscriptions last year, and two quietly cancelled by spring. The other two use it for boilerplate and nothing else. Less cult, more gym membership.
