#MeWriting I seem to be having this discussion a lot with people lately. AI hype is bullshit. AI doom is bullshit. Pardon my high school level French. It might get worse. Click away if that bothers you.
I want to give you a concrete example of each, because the reason I know these two facts to be true is that I use and develop actual so-called “AI”. I spend an inordinate amount of time and effort watching other people use actual so-called “AI”. And when I don’t understand what they are trying to accomplish, I ask them. And I listen.
I hear the craziest, stupidest shit. But I don’t judge. Out loud anyway. I try to figure out how to make it safe for them.
My concrete example for hype is OpenClaw, an open source “AI agent” system that has taken the tech world by storm since the end of January, 2026. It is the dumbest shit I could ever have imagined in an AI ecosystem that does not disappoint. High level, people want to automate spamming their contacts instead of texting or calling them or interacting like human beings. There is nothing impressive about this. Nothing. You’re not cool for wanting to do this. You’re an asshole. However…
This mob is instructive to watch. The early users spent hundreds of dollars a day on tokens for very large cloud models trying to make their agents work. Then, a bunch of them decided they should get Mac Minis to run OpenClaw. Most of that bunch didn’t and still doesn’t know why they want to run it on Mac Minis. That doesn’t solve the cloud token bill problem. Unless… They install a private, local LLM on their brand new Mac Minis. But they don’t know that and didn’t think about it. So they all rush out to buy Mac Minis and make YouTube videos about how they’re all buying Mac Minis because they are reliable and have an ecosystem. I shit you not. 5 to 10 minutes of AI hype about Mac Minis without a hint of what the reason is!
The Mac Mini is an ideal machine for running a local LLM because it has unified memory and GPU cores on the same “System on a Chip” (SoC) as the CPU. This makes them fast and cheap at the expense of not being upgradeable. This also makes the Mac Mini about 1/4 the cost of NVIDIA GPUs for LLM processing power at comparable speed. And you don’t have to spec out parts and install them in your system. THAT IS WHY YOU BUY A MAC MINI TO RUN OPENCLAW. I really can’t emphasize that enough.
AI Hype crowd, you can be assumed to be full of shit because, at ground level, you never know what you’re talking about.
Now the AI Doomers. There is an essay by one appropriately named Matt Shumer. Shumer the doomer. The simulation is totally screwing with us. See how I pulled a word choice punch there? Take a minute and read it if you must. It’s in a link a couple sentences back.
Shumer is, allegedly, a CEO of an AI company and a partner in his own investment firm. So when he told us everything is rigged and we’re all going to lose our jobs to AI, millions of white collar professionals are wringing their hands today and worrying about how they’re going to afford their next kale salad. And the keto people… well, they are even more fu-screwed! Shumer the doomer is the most annoying kind of doomer because his doom relies on AI succeeding as the hype crowd hopes. He is different from the “you stole my PhD thesis” crowd of doomers.
Here’s the reality. AI is not doing anyone’s job better or more efficiently. You hear about vibe coding. It is helping the bottom 50% of coders who previously produced buggy crap produce 5x as much buggy crap or produce the same amount of buggy crap in 1/5 the time. It is not helping good or the best programmers produce more, because good and the best have pride in their work and won’t push or publish crap. That slows down the vibe. A lot. Here’s a link to a short video explaining the math.
“But Brad! I’m a very good programmer, even better than you, and coding agents make me so much more productive!”
To which I respond:
“No you’re not. See above. You’re a shitty programmer and you’re producing more shit than ever now. Next.”
I don’t want to be a dick, but that’s the truth, and the truth matters when we talk about AI replacing everyone’s job. The same calculus will apply in anything we ask LLMs to do. I know this because I know and can show you what the completion algorithm does. Watch here. Oh, and I hate to pull rank on your sorry intellectual ass, but I have a Master’s of Science in Information and Computer Science with a concentration in Algorithms and Data Structures from the University of California, Irvine (1994). UCI ICS was a top 5 program at the time. We were looking up at Cal Tech. So yeah, I’m a dick for telling you I can understand what the completion algorithm does and I can and would be happy to help you understand! I’m happy to help you so you don’t fall for the doomer bullshit that AI can take your job! It turns out, 32 years later, that’s why I stayed in school.
But I am also an observer. And I see people being threatened with “replacement by AI” by bosses and companies with their heads stuck clearly up their collective ass. Over a long enough and messy enough time horizon, reality wins out. But that doesn’t mean the battle isn’t going to be difficult and painful. It just means that when we win eventually, we hang the people who caused us unreasonable harm. And maybe I’m not employing a metaphor here. Or maybe I am. Actually I’m not. I’ll bring all the rope we need. The people who do this to us are not our friends. They are awkward negotiators screwing with our lives and livelihoods. They deserve what’s coming. You people stick to the metaphor though.
This might get hundreds of views because it isn’t what anyone wants to hear. That said, if it resonates with you, I make software that lets you run LLMs privately and safely. My Mmojo Server eschews the chat illusion — an abomination in my humble opinion — and lets you interact directly with the completion algorithm, the natural language of an LLM. It’s free to install and use. It’s open source so that others can verify my claims and assure you I’m not full of shit like just about everyone else with a “voice” in AI. Get started here:
I’ve just launched a podcast called Mmorning Mmojo. I’m inspired by the recently departed Scott Adams, whose life mission was simply to be helpful.
I’m Brad Hutchings. Don’t even get me started.
-Brad
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Brad Hutchings
brad@BradHutchings.com
I would appreciate your reactions and comments on my LinkedIn repost.