People really like talking about AI. That’s not to say they actually like AI; they just like talking about it. They like talking about the political, business, and societal implications, or comparing the current AI era to previous boom-and-bust cycles.
In these conversations, I find that very few people are what you might call profoundly pro-AI. Many are ambivalent about it, at best seeing some benefit wrapped in a larger cloak of danger.
In a recent newsletter, I compared the current AI boom to the late 1990s dotcom boom and bust. More often, I hear other people say that this AI moment feels a lot more like the NFT hype cycle, circa 2020. The implication being that the NFT era was built around a wildly overhyped concept that was, in the end deeply stupid, and we may come to see AI in the same way.
More often, people say that this AI moment feels like the NFT hype cycle; the implication being that the NFT era was built around a wildly overhyped concept that was in the end, deeply stupid, and we may come to see AI in the same way.
I’m more optimistic about AI, in the sense that I believe many people will find a way to make AI a useful tool for their work or personal lives. But I also wonder what that says about the relentless “learn to code” message we’ve been telling everyone for close to 20 years, from elementary school kids to mid-career people looking to retrain. There was such an emphasis on coding, above all else, for years that never made a lot of sense to me.
There’s an analogy I’ve been using to explain the shift from traditional programming to AI-assisted coding (and moving rapidly toward fully autonomous programming). Time travel back 120-plus years, to the early days of the automobile. To own a car like the Model T, you basically had to be an amateur mechanic. Over time, cars became simpler, and more reliable. More of their internal processes were automated, up to and including automatic transmissions replacing manual ones. Today, you can just be a driver, and you don’t really need to know much about how your car actually works.
Software creation is the same. Until now, you had to know how to code software to create it. First by hand, as I did learning BASIC on my Tandy 1000 as a child. Later on, using code libraries and other shortcuts. Now, AI will take your natural language instructions and churn out a working piece of software in minutes. It may not be perfect, but that’s because we’re in the transitional stage where it still pays to be your own mechanic. But, sooner than we think, vibe-coding will not only be the default, but the only way most people will interact with code.
That isn’t necessarily a great thing, especially if it floods the internet with endless low-quality AI slop apps. But that’s a very inside baseball view, just as auto enthusiasts might say the roads would be better off if everyone still knew enough about their cars to be amateur mechanics.
However, it’s unrealistic. With self-driving cars waving at us from just over the horizon (they’ll get here eventually, but it certainly seems to be taking a long time), it seems unlikely that future drivers will know more, rather than less, about their cars and how they work.
No, your car just works, and you treat it like any turnkey consumer appliance. Creating apps, games, websites, or any kind of software product is going in the same direction. You don’t need to be your own mechanic, and soon you won’t need to think about code much at all, besides asking for what you want. There will be good parts to that and bad. It’s how we deal with this inevitable future state that will determine whether AI works for us and with us, or against us.
Of course, you should take this entire car analogy with a grain of salt, as I’m a lifelong New Yorker who doesn’t actually drive.
I don’t write about games as often as I used to, but one game that’s been making a lot of waves lately has enough interesting stuff to make it stand out and warrant some discussion.
That game is Crimson Desert, from developer and publisher Pearl Abyss, which I think had one of the most successful pre-release marketing campaigns I have seen in years. The steady drip of in-game footage and details from South Korean publisher over the past year has really pulled in fans of open-world games like Skyrim and Fallout, even if they’re not familiar with Crimson Desert lore. And of course, the game uses every high-end graphics trick in the book, which becomes especially obvious as you traverse its vast, varied biomes.
Despite the hype, when the game launched, it got some middling early reviews. Were I prone to internet speak, I might say, “If not Skyrim, why Skyrim-shaped?” Because Crimson Desert feels deeply weird. Something about every game system, from walking to fighting to interacting with NPCs, just doesn’t feel like you expect. It also leans heavily into every fantasy-genre cliché in the book, yes, including dragons.
“If not Skyrim, why Skyrim-shaped?”
The best way I can think of to describe it is with another, semi-obscure game reference. Crimson Desert’s vibe feels a lot like the Dragon’s Dogma series. That’s a Capcom-published fantasy RPG that includes all the great things you’d expect from an open-world, Skyrim-ish game, paired with an odd quirkiness that turned off a lot of people.
That’s what Crimson Desert feels like: accomplished, ambitious, but way too quirky for most casual fantasy adventure game fans.
Even so, the game hits a lot of the right notes for me. I’m forever a fan of big open-world games where you spend most of your time exploring and talking to NPCs rather than fighting enemies or managing resources. Though there’s plenty of that stuff in there as well.
It may be gaming heresy to say this, but I found Crimson Desert much more engaging than the universally praised Resident Evil Requiem. The new Resident Evil felt like a slog, entirely too committed to its built-in guardrails. It’s a game with a play-like-this-not-like-that mentality. For example, I love the original Resident Evil 2 (back in 1998, it was my entry into writing about tech and games), but I found the remake tedious. Too many interruptions from Mr. X. I like to kill zombies at my own pace.
Or, maybe I’m too much of a wimp for the overly serious scares in modern RE games.
The Micro Center team just put out a package of survey results. One thousand Americans were asked about their AI habits, level of trust, etc., and the results said a lot about the current state of AI and consumer opinions about it.
First of all, people are increasingly using AI tools. In many cases, it’s not a deliberate act; it’s literally because Google defaults to an AI-powered above-the-fold response when you search for almost anything. But...Google’s AI overviews were also the most-trusted AI source among survey respondents (Grok was the least-trusted).
About 1 in 5 people say they always double-check information they get from AI, but 35 percent will check the information if it seems questionable.
My favorite stat was about detecting AI fakes, sorted by generation. For example, Gen-X respondents underestimated how easily they could tell a real image from an AI-generated image. Millennials and Gen-Z both did better on that test...but also overestimated how well they’d do. Maybe it’s got something to do with our natural Gen-X skepticism.
You can read the full survey results here, via Micro Center News, and we’re already working on our next data project, so stay tuned for more.
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