AI for most users is just another form of sophisticated procrastination
I spend a lot of time physically around other entrepreneurs and business owners, as well as in online communities. One thing that I keep seeing in these spaces is that people are over hyping the fuck out of AI and this, to me, just looks like another form of sophisticated procrastination.
People are going through what I call CEO derangement syndrome.
They think they are enlightened beings because some version of Claude Opus told them they were a genius when in reality it was just blowing smoke up their ass.
This Is Not New
I’ve seen this happen time and time again with other “productivity tools”
People switching CRMs, note-taking apps: Notion, ClickUp, Evergreen, Coda, Obsidian. Always searching for the “best” one. Never actually doing the work
Music industry version: producers hopping between DAWs, testing five companies’ compressors and EQs, piano rolls, watching endless hours of tutorials & reviews doing everything in their power to NOT make music.
…they never make any music
AI tools are just the latest version of this same loop.
People discover AI and start thinking they're ascended CEOs chosen by God because they got a sloppy Python script running in their business. Now they're convinced that if they just pump out enough bloated code, they can replace entire departments in their small startups... But if we're being honest with ourselves?...most of them are just procrastinating.
They’re avoiding the hard decisions they know they need to be making by being distracted with this shiny new “revolutionary“ tool.
However…it’s been over a year since Claude Code rolled out and I still haven’t seen one of my contemporaries build something with true immediate value for their life/business…
I also haven't seen ANY of them make a HUGE leap in income this past year since implementing these tools into their businesses... All I'm seeing is people finding another rational excuse to avoid the work they KNOW they're supposed to do... like making a new human hire to replace a stagnant under-performer on their team, or fixing the marketing funnel they know they suck at. But that's too painful. So instead they spend 6 hours a day talking to Claude Code, building fancy automations that save them a few clicks.
The Delusion
Any real power user who spent serious time with it will tell you: for cool personal projects, Claude Code is awesome. You no longer need to hire an expensive developer for your little personal plugin or software ideas.
But thinking you’ll build your own version of Notion at an enterprise level that’s operational and reliable enough for your team to use as a collaborative workspace, just to save yourself a couple hundred bucks a month?
Complete bullshit.
They “save” $100-$200/month but now spend 2-3 extra hours a week maintaining slop software with subpar code. They’ve literally added another job to themselves and a few extra AI subscriptions to keep it all running...
Just pay the fucking subscription for real professional software like (Notion, Asana, Monday, or whatever enterprise CRM you need) and get back to work.
if supposedly everyone out here is 10x maybe even 100x more productive... where are the revenue gains and receipts to show for it?
Seems like the only ones seeing those gains are the AI companies themselves... and the people selling them the cloud, the storage and the graphics cards.
Kinda funny that the only people making money in this new “gold rush” are the ones selling you the shovels... hmm.
I personally know people trying to replace their entire sales team with a chatbot. Spending enormous amounts of time and tokens testing Claude and various other LLM’s to see if it has “infinite context & memory” for their clients to fool them into thinking they are talking to a human and programming it with a bit of their psychology training from med school thinking this will outperform their existing human sales team…
Meanwhile... Claude, Alexa and Chat Gippity themselves barely have proper context and memory of who I am, what I purchased last month, what I'm currently doing... or even what day it is. These things are built by multi-billion dollar companies. If THEY can't figure it out, how the fuck am I supposed to figure it out with a few vibes and subpar code managing my clients?
There are tons of CEOs with an inflated ego because a little AI bot tells them they’re a genius for a simple GitHub repository, a PostgresSQL database and skill.md file.
This thing is intentionally programmed to make you feel good and addicted. Keep using it, burn more credits, up your subscription. You’re increasing the bottom line for the company, not yours.
Every article that comes out of “AI replacing 20% of x company labour force” is like porn for these AI companies... They want CEO’s to feel FOMO that if they don’t adopt this tech they are going to feel left out and fall behind...i’m not convinced.
My Honest Take
I’m not denying there are great use cases. It has made my life easier. But this is mostly small and repetitive admin tasks.
organizing, cataloguing, batch converting files in my cloud storage & hard drives
auto-completing creative and client databases that I’m working on with my team
summarizing team meetings and creating action plans right after our calls
helping with creative brain-storming through pressure testing my ideas
quickly building a visual HTML page or Figma board to present to clients a new creative initiative
helping organize my accounting paperwork and giving me a quick scope of where I am at before i send my numbers to my actual real accountant
quickly reviewing contracts before having to send them to my actual lawyer
etc...
However, like most things in life, I realize it must be used in moderation. This only works with a focused approach. Don't get lost in the sauce with unnecessary details and lines of code that serve your ego and nobody else... like trying to get AI to do something you could honestly do faster yourself in two clicks, instead of waiting for Claude to assess whatever mumbo jumbo Wispr Flow word salad you just dictated at it... just to update the status of a project tracker in Notion...
I believe this is NOT going to replace real human beings and the creative soul, spirit and unique life experiences we pour into the important work.
Let’s see how well that statement ages...
In my industry, it’s never been easier to make music... but it’s also never been harder to make a real hit that stands out in the sea of noise... On top of that, Suno and other AI music gen tools are making producers ultra lazy. I can immediately tell when something was one-shotted with Suno by how “thin” and “tin-ey” it sounds. And I think this goes for software, writing, art, building a business and any other creative pursuit
LLMs and data sets look backwards, creativity looks FORWARD
EVIL IS WHAT DISTRACTS - Franz Kafka, 1919
and this might be one of the biggest distractions and psy-ops of our lifetime...
I’ve heard someone say this before. AI is just a spicy autocomplete. Even Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist and one of the godfathers of modern AI, says LLMs are nowhere near AGI.
“We’re not going to get to human intelligence, human level intelligence or super intelligence by scaling up or by even refining the paradigm. There is a need for a change of paradigm.” — Yann LeCun
Now I don’t need him or anyone else to convince me of it because the more I use AI every day, the more I realize how fucking true that statement is... and how far away we really are.
AI is here to stay. My life is better because of it. I love it, and my team and I use it every day. But I now know... believing it's going to replace my team of 10 because a few distracted CEOs got lost in the sauce, fell for the AI doomer overhype and are terrified of getting left behind?
This may be the most sophisticated procrastination of all.