Some thoughts on A.I.

The computational requirements and benefits of A.I. has its place.

I would argue it belongs in science fields, mostly. Please: detect cancers early. Find new stars and galaxies. Help sea creatures. Research new vaccines. You get the idea… regulated industries with systems of review and desires to progress humanity forward.

Don’t fucking give it to the general public to make shitty “art.”

Don’t give it to the CEOs and tech bros who want to lay off hard working humans in the name of efficiency or profit disguised as progress.

And please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t give it to those that would do harm.

Look, I’ve played with the LLMs, or “Chat,” back in, what, 2021? 2022? I thought it was an interesting way to rubber duck, or summarize your own work, more than create anything. (Because it’s not creating…)

But beyond that? I couldn’t see its value.

And then, pretty soon, these language models, or "AIs" were widely available. And then it started showing up in our everyday tools… and people were being encouraged to use it to “create new things” like write full books, craft photographs (what?) or make movies without even hiring actors.

And, mostly, I was annoyed. Because I kept hearing my dad in the back of my mind going, “Mark my words. Technology will advance so far that they’ll make a new movie with Bruce Lee and you won’t even be able to tell it’s not actually him.”

He said that to me in 2001.

I thought he was nuts. I argued that people wouldn’t allow it. It was … indecent. He just smirked. Because he knew technology and he knew people. He died in 2002 and, so far, he’s been right about everything.

Because look at us now. Fucking Ozzy Osborne is going back on tour. Posthumously. We've gone from hologram revivals of artists to full on interactive avatars of the dead.

I guess this is more of a rant than any specific email… I have "AI" fatigue, y’all. It is beginning to feel like a Hydra. I get away in one area and it rears two more heads in another.

You can’t get rid of it in Google Workspace. It’s even in Proton. Notion used to let you turn it off completely if you reached out to customer service (I don’t know if they still do. I did this a few years ago and some of the features have creeped back in.) Canva is filled with "AI" slop resources. I’ve come across several "AI" generated sites in the wild. Even my local grocery store decided that "AI" asparagus was more appealing than… real asparagus… in their flyers.

And now MCPs have come to Kit. If you use “Chat” then perhaps it’s going to be a natural extension of your workflow… checking stats and tagging people through a "simple prompt" or drafting and writing emails "in your voice."

But I want to challenge you to not prompt “Chat” to do things that require effort simply because they require effort. Could you save time? Sure. But it could also cost you time making sure it's accurate reporting, or if you use it generatively, "sounds decent." So is it worth it?

Let's face it. "AI" hallucinates. A lot. Kit’s own documentation even warns developers about this for when they’re creating tools to integrate with Kit.

AI agents can misinterpret or hallucinate details - Kit's Developer Documentation

So before you use “Chat” to ask Kit how your emails are performing, or what your open rate was… maybe we could ask Kit for better reporting, better functionality, and better interface design. Because what they’re pushing the MCP to us affiliates (yes, I'm an affiliate) being able to do... is what their reports could easily produce on their own. (And should because these "AI" agents also really suck at math.)

I’d argue that people that use "AI" aren’t necessarily lazy… the companies pushing it are.

And I want you to consider, before you ask “Chat” what your best performing email is, what metrics actually matter to you. Because the info, if accurate, is going to be one sided. Chat is not going to know what you actually value.

• Do you value an open rate? Or a reply rate? Kit doesn’t have that data.
• Do you value people staying on your list? Or unsubscribing when it’s time. Kit can’t decipher this.
• Do you value a click through rate? Or a specific outcome from that click? In that particular email. Chat can’t know.

If done right, this is all data you can glean from a spreadsheet. Like this one I made in Airtable that you can customize to the things that you actually value. And have a place to craft your emails away from your email marketing platform. And have a history and a backup.

If you want to know what kind of emails your audience really want: ask them.

If you want to know what your best email was… know what “best” is before you start sending.

And yeah, this all requires effort.

Having a business requires effort.

Effort is what makes it worth it. Effort is what drives creation. And effort can be difficult. Creativity is difficult. Conception is difficult. Labor and birthing something, anything, is difficult. Learning is difficult. Problem solving is difficult. Teaching is difficult. Exploring is difficult.

Being human is fucking difficult.

And I have to wonder how much of our humanity are we giving over in the name of "ease"?