thoughts & feelings

i'm scared of ai, and i think that's okay to admit.

not because the technology exists - that part is actually pretty incredible. i'm scared because of what we're losing in the process.

what i'm seeing in the classroom

i'm a teaching assistant for an intro to cs class, and almost all my students' work is clearly ai-generated. fuck, most of what i touch is entirely AI generated: professors' slide decks are ai-generated, lecture notes are ai generated, papers are ai graded; professors don't care anymore! students will get grades for work they didn't do, thoughts they didn't think, learning they didn't actually learn; and professors are oblivious, or they just aren't interested in teaching anymore. 

ai produces work, and then ai evaluates and grades said work. humans are basically out of the loop (wtaf).

and that makes me wonder - what's the point of any of this anymore?

i've spent years developing my writing, my critical thinking, my ability to wrestle with complex ideas and articulate them clearly. years working incredibly hard on perfecting my craft, but now it feels like i'm competing against machines that can do it faster, cleaner, and without the messy human process of actually figuring things out.

thinking about tomorrow

the academic stuff is just the beginning. what really keeps me up at night is thinking about the future.

my parents built their careers in a time when skills felt more permanent. you learned something, got good at it, and could rely on that expertise for decades. now i'm about to enter a job market where entire industries might be automated away before i settle down.

i think about my little brother, who's still in high school. what world am i leaving for him? will there be space for human creativity, human connection, human work by the time he's graduating?

my friends and i talk about this stuff sometimes, usually late at night when the existential dread hits hardest. we're all feeling it, this sense that we're standing at the edge of something massive and unpredictable, and at the same time feeling like we have absolutely no control over it.

some people tell us we're being dramatic, that every generation faces technological change. but this feels different. this feels like everything is changing at once, faster than we can adapt.

maybe there's another way

i don't have answers. i don't know how to navigate a world where the skills i'm developing might become obsolete before i graduate. i don't know how to compete with tools that can write, code, analyze, and create without breaking a sweat, and 100s of times better and faster than i can. but maybe that's the wrong way to think about it.

maybe instead of competing with ai, we need to figure out what makes us irreplaceably human. maybe we need to double down on empathy, on genuine connection, on the messy, imperfect, beautiful process of being alive and thinking and feeling.

maybe our generation's job isn't to stop the future from happening, but to make sure humanity doesn't get lost in the transition.

i'm still scared. i think i always will be. but i'm also starting to think that fear might be exactly what we need right now; not paralyzing terror, but the kind of healthy fear that makes you pay attention, that makes you fight for what matters. there's no hiding the fact that this transition won't be easy, but it isn't supposed to be.

wtf is tnf?

writing has been a core part of who I am forever, and I've always found comfort in cementing my thoughts and feelings in text. tnf, i hope, will become an extension of that. i don't know exactly what I'll be writing about, and i definitely won't be writing consistently, but i nonetheless hope it can bring value to you.

but tnf is much bigger than just writing. i've always found it difficult to convey what i believe to be true and meaningful without concerted effort, and i've also found that the easiest way to do that is through writing. people find it easier to understand me when i write, and, at the risk of sounding pretentious, i find it easier to understand myself and what i believe in when i write.

thinking is inextricably linked to writing, and writing is inextricably linked to thinking. without one, you cannot harness the other. i also hope to help others realize that and take advantage of it! 

the catalyst

a few months ago, as i was reading sama's blog post titled the gentle singularity, and i was struck by the following line: "...most of the path in front of us is now lit, and the dark areas are receding fast."

it felt a bit naive, maybe even arrogant, but it also resonated deeply. we're not just blips in history, but we're playing an active role in defining and, for better or worse, creating the future. that's a pretty awesome thing to be a part of and it felt right memorialize my thoughts and feelings today in a little corner on the internet.

managing expectations

i've been coding since i was seven, and am a computer science major, so tnf will probably be home to a lot of tech writing. i also research ai at cmu, and i'll probably be talking about my work here.

i play the guitar, take photos, and am weirdly interested in fringe philosophy (zizek and the sort). i also hyper fixate, and bounce between random shows / franchises / conspiracies. i'm also falling in love woodworking and 3d printing.

point is: tnf will be realllllyyyyyyy random; tnf is as much of a place for me as it is for you. anyway, i really hope you enjoy reading about whatever i feel like writing about!