I’m not sure it’s one or the other. Firing off a prompt to Claude Code and letting it rip can be great for productivity but I won’t pretend I’m reading every line it writes unless I have to.

And yet if I’m inquiring into a subject matter I have scant knowledge about, and want to learn more about, I voraciously read the output and plan my next prompt thoughtfully throughout.

The dividing line is intellectual curiosity. AI can stimulate the mind in ways people may not have thought possible, like explaining subjects they never grasped previously, but the user has to want to go down that path to achieve it.

Social media doomscrolling, by contrast, is designed to anesthetize, so the result should not surprise.

To me AI feels like the early web. I can get information without sifting through heaps of SEO trash, and it’s like having this weird magic thinking mirror to explore ideas. Unlike social media it’s not a sea of culture war rage trolling and slop.

I am not trying to use it as a companion though. Not only do I have human ones but it feels super weird and creepy to try. I couldn’t suspend disbelief since I know how these things work.

> To me AI feels like the early web

To me AI feels like the final nail in the web's coffin

There is nothing remotely charming about it like the early web had