People of all ages and backgrounds come together outdoors, connecting ideas and technology to illuminate the diverse and collaborative nature of AI innovation.

Okay, this will probably sound controversial, but that's not my intent. I'm just sharing my thoughts because AI is everywhere right now, especially on social media and in blog posts.

These views range from fairly neutral:[1] – Manton Reece – Tom Casavant – Paul Thurrott – Richard Campbell

To fairly positive, with the idea that you need to learn or use AI because... – Jim Mitchell – Numeric Citizen – Leo Laporte – Hey Loura – Ricardo Mendes

To more negative views, often focused on whether AI's value proposition can actually justify the money being spent: - Ed Zitron

People tend to frame the debate as two opposing camps: camp 1 wants nothing to do with AI, and camp 2 wants to hand it control over everything. I live in a quieter third camp. Most people are actually somewhere in the middle, but we don't shout as loudly. I see both the risks and the benefits. AI has let me try things I never would have had the courage to try, and it's helped me grow and learn about technology in ways I likely wouldn't have otherwise.

The loudest voices are camps 1 and 2, yet it's usually the middle camp that makes the real decisions when it counts. So maybe camps 1 and 2 should learn a little from us: camp 1 could be a little less rigid, and camp 2 could be more realistic and grounded.

AI is not going away. It may become less democratized. We are already seeing token, credit, and time limits, but those feel like temporary bumps. Many limits are at least partly artificial, and they may ease as the tech and business models evolve.

Given current politics here and abroad, tearing people down doesn't help. If AI isn't being used to create false narratives or spread “fake news,” people should be free to use it or not. I don't support blanket punishments for anyone who used AI to edit, help, or build something. That kind of hard-line stance, and labeling anything non-factual as “slop,” isn't productive.

The larger economic issue is real and has been building for decades. Automation started with the paperless office and industrial robotics. Robots and AI will continue to displace jobs, and that's a societal and political problem we need to solve now, not shrug off with “it's not my problem.” It's not necessarily tomorrow's crisis, but it's coming in the not-so-distant future.

Job losses mean less tax revenue, and corporations and wealthy individuals are skilled at finding legal ways to reduce taxes, wages, and benefits. We should rethink corporate structures and the single-minded focus on shareholder value. A shift toward an employee-and-business-first model would make more sense. After all, without a functioning business, you don't have shareholder value, and without employees, you don't really have a business unless you fully automate. If companies replace workers with machines and still expect high shareholder returns, they may under-invest in the equipment and long-term stability that would make that strategy sustainable.

That's my two cents. I don't think we should be tearing people down for using technology that helps them, that they pay for themselves, and that helps them communicate and complete their vision.

For full transparency, this post contains my thoughts and my opinions, and it was edited and proofread with AI. I made, directed, and approved the changes. AI helped organize my wording and corrected my spelling and grammar. It did not write this post, create the ideas behind it, or shape my feelings or thoughts. That, to me, is responsible AI usage.

I could not afford to hire an editor or an artist for this post, or every other post, to make a feature image. I told the AI what I wanted for a feature image, and it made it. I think it did an amazing job bringing my prompt alive.

1. I am using “views” broadly here. Some examples come from specific blog posts, while others come from podcasts, videos, comments, or general public statements I have seen or heard. ↩

#ai #opinion #technology

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A man joyfully adjusts settings on a futuristic interface labeled “Analyzing,” exploring the possibilities of Stardock's Clairvoyance technology in a cozy, modern workspace.

I have been trying out a new app from Stardock called Clairvoyance. It is a nice AI interface that is very powerful and lets you use API keys to interact with large language models and do all kinds of things. It also takes a privacy-first approach and is a bit more user friendly than some other tools I have tried. I will say this has been very compelling and interesting to use. I honestly cannot believe it is free, and I hope it stays free. That said, there are still some bugs and rough edges. For example, it does not always make it clear whether it is actively working or if something has hung. When subagents get stuck there does not seem to be an obvious way to stop or cancel the task, at least that I have found so far. I have also seen cases where the interface says it is finished but still reports that it is working. On occasion I have asked it what it is doing or what is going on, and the response mentions something running in the background but does not really answer the question directly. It almost feels like it is ignoring the question and returning a vague or nonsense response instead of explaining what is happening. So there are definitely some areas that still need to be fleshed out. To be fair, the software is clearly marked as being in alpha. When it is on target and working, especially when it is helping with coding, it actually works quite well.

What makes it interesting is that it is not just another chatbot interface. The goal is giving people a way to orchestrate multiple AI models and agents from one place. From what I can tell, Clairvoyance makes working with AI tools easier by putting everything into a single desktop interface.

Some of the things Clairvoyance focuses on include:

• Connecting to multiple AI providers using your own API keys
• Supporting different large language models instead of locking you into one system
• Creating agents and subagents that can perform tasks and report results
• Allowing tasks to be broken down and delegated between agents
• Providing a desktop interface instead of relying on multiple browser tabs
• Taking a privacy-first approach so users can control which models and services they connect to

I find it funny that the best way for LLMs, and for people working with them, mirrors a corporate structure. AI tools have really embraced the organizational chart. Think about it. I have seen several people I follow who build or use coding tools do this, including projects around Nostr such as work shared by William Casarin, also known as jb55 (jb55.com). The Nostr community is embracing and experimenting with tools like this. The idea is that you recreate a functioning workplace. You are the boss. Then you have supervisors or agents. Those agents can have their own subagents or employees. They assign tasks, check the work, and then present the results back to you. It is basically the corporate structure recreated in software. Isn't it hilarious that even AI ends up with a corporate structure.

I do wonder how long it will be before we see the slacker AI agent or the eager beaver employee agent. Say what you will, but in my lifetime I have often felt like machines sometimes have a life of their own. Even when they are manufactured the same way, certain machines develop little quirks. If you treat them right, or simply let them do what they were designed to do, they tend to work the way they should.

This whole AI scene is exploding. I am reading more and more posts from people who are using them, people who refuse to use them, people who hate them for what they represent, and people who say they are making the climate crisis worse. My view is that the situation is more complicated than that. Unprovoked war dwarfs AI's perceived climate effects more than datacenters. Why worry about climate effects from datacenters when we have real, visible climate disasters that are more human-purposefully destructive? But I digress.

I recently read a compelling blog post by Tom Casavant called Musings on AI. If you do not follow him in your RSS reader or on social media, you probably should. He has views on AI that are similar to mine, which is neutral. He recently dove into Meshtastic with “Mastastic,” a cool offline Mastodon client over mesh networks (1-mile range in tests). I have been eyeing Meshtastic and Meshcore myself for a hobby project. He also appears to be doing the internet a service by responsibly reporting issues he discovers on websites so they can be fixed in an ethical way.

I like different views and takes about AI. I read and listen to people who fawn over AI like Leo Laporte, William Casarin, and Vitor Pamplona, more neutral views like Tom Casavant and Paul Thurrott and Robert Campbell, to the “AI is not a great business and an implosion is coming” Ed Zitron. This gives me a full round view of AI and shapes what I do and how I use it. AI is not human; it is a tool, a very useful and democratizing one with real limitations. While this post seems to have chased rabbits and probably did. I just wanted to let you know about Clairvoyance, my thoughts on it and AI in general using this tool and how other people's thoughts on AI in general shape my views and usage. AI is history in the making. We are getting closer to my vision of how we can get a Star Trek Style computer. With tools like Clairvoyance paving the way with the front end and taking the technicality out of AI we will be there in the not too distant future. Then who knows what, replicators or a holodeck or maybe both.

Links may be shortened via mtribe.link for cleaner formatting. All links redirect to their original destinations.

#technology #ai #innovation

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Developed in Python using AI coding assistants (Claude and ChatGPT 5.2 High Reasoning) to accelerate development, I designed the platform structure and verified the implementation through testing. The screenshot shows the current interface. Some posts appear duplicated because I follow the same people across multiple platforms.

NASA's latest technology captures the dynamic interaction of the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission-1 lander's engine plumes with the lunar surface.

The platform works well and I appreciate having one central location to read and respond to posts. There are occasional bugs to fix and a few features left to implement, but it serves its purpose.

#personal #programming #ai

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I can see IFTTT and Zapier either having to step up their game or eventually fading away. AI is a game-changer for those of us who aren't coders. While I’m sure the code isn’t the most optimized (Claude AI is supposedly the best at code generation right now), it’s incredible how AI allows regular people like me to experiment and bring my ideas to life.

This is how I envision AI—not as a replacement, but as a helper and a great equalizer. I know this technology will inevitably change lives (not necessarily for the better) and eliminate some jobs, but it’s also making powerful tools and knowledge more accessible to the masses.

Tags: #AI #Selfhosting #Automation

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