hayward@click:~/~/rants/2026-10-05-i-changed-my-mind

what these numbers are

Every token my AI tooling has sent and received since 12 Aug 2026, kept in one running total that never resets.

is what goes in, is what comes back out. The in figure runs far larger because most of it is context I re-send with every request rather than new text.

Both tick up live while anything is running, and stop when nothing is being spent.

Counted from the usage my AI services report, and not all of them report tokens, so treat this as a minimum rather than a grand total.

what this timer is

A countdown to 14 Feb 2027.

That is the deadline for my community projects, the Discord server included: the time they have to pick up momentum and find their users.

A date I set myself, and I would rather have it on the wall than in my head.

./rants Daily Rant

I changed my mind about AI, and it scares me

5 October 2026

I have spent the last couple of years building with AI and telling anyone who would listen that it was the best thing to happen to people like me. I built tools with it, shipped things I could never have shipped alone, and enjoyed every part of it. I still enjoy it. That part has not changed.

What changed is what I think happens next.

I no longer believe this is a story about clever tools making us faster. I think it is a story about work being taken, and about the people who do that work being left to carry the cost. I have watched what a good model does to a week of work I would once have charged for. It does the whole week. The person paying for it does not need me for that any more.

There is a version of this where I adapt, and I am trying. But I am fifty three, and the thing I am competing with does not sleep, does not need a mortgage, and gets better every few weeks. I am not after sympathy and I am not packing it in. I am telling you what it looks like from this seat, because most of what I read about AI is written by people who will never feel it.

Part of it is contracts. Nothing is owned any more, everything is rented, and the thing my work now depends on can change its terms, raise its price, or switch itself off. Part of it is the rules being written right now, because the companies that can afford lawyers are the ones those rules were shaped around. Part of it is watching, since everything typed into these tools becomes training data for somebody else. And the last part is simple: when a company can cut staff and keep the profit, it will say so out loud on an earnings call, and the people on the other end of that sentence are people like me.

I do not think AI kills us. I think it takes the work first, and the work is how most of us get to have a life. That is the part I cannot make my peace with, and it is why what I write here has changed.

If you think I am wrong, tell me. I would rather argue about it than pretend I am fine.

All rants · The work is going, and mine goes first