"AI" is a word like "electricity" or "internet." It is simply too broad that it is hard to agree on what it is. And hence, it is great to drive division.
Can the internet be bad? Yes, if it is used for crime. Can the internet be good? Yes, if it is used to help people. AI can be bad too. But also can be so useful. The technology doesn't decide. We do.
Even defining what is bad, or what is good depends on the perspective, and perception. And usually, having one topic, and taking a side, is a good way to spread quickly.
And this is not something new to algorithm-based networks, religion, sports, and wars. They will get more attention, if they divide the opinion. Pro, or against. Black or white. No middle ground. And not because it doesn't exist, but doesn't catch fire as quick, and doesn't spread as far.
But in this essay, I want to focus on the "AI" debate. Because, most of what I see, read, listen to, watch, and sense. Is either "AI is our salvation", or "AI is the worst thing that has ever happened".
I want to offer a third option. Not pro-AI. Not anti-AI. Just: try it, and decide for yourself.
Hopefully, you will take this framework and apply to other things in your life. Is not easy, because it's tempting to take a side and die on that hill. But at least, it is worth trying.
I've Seen This Before
I'm a programmer and game developer. That's the world I know. I won't pretend to have answers beyond it.
My first encounter with programming was at a flea market in Mexico City. I was maybe 13. My dad and I were walking through rows of pirated CDs when one caught my eye: Borland C++. I asked the seller what it was. He said it was a program to create other programs.
That blew my mind. But I honestly don't recall understanding what he meant.
My dad bought me the CD. I went home, installed it, opened it, and—nothing. I had no idea what to do. I didn't know what a programming language was. I didn't know about syntax or compiling. I was disappointed, because I knew that was potentially a powerful tool, but I had no idea how to use it.
Years later, I took a workshop. HTML, JavaScript, Flash. I rode the metro to get there, and on the way I'd pass bookstalls selling computer magazines. One day I found a C++ book in Spanish. I read it without ever running the code on a computer. Just trying to understand how someone could describe a concept—like a vehicle—in a way a machine could understand.
Then came Java at university. Then C. Then C#. Each layer built on the last. Each one made the next one easier to learn.
At some point, I discovered XNA and started making games. Later, Unity. I wrote shaders by hand—I loved designing them, but the typing was just a means to an end. Then Unity introduced Shader Graph, and I never went back. Nobody called me a fake shader programmer. (Or maybe someone did, but I didn't hear. And probably would not care.)
The same thing happened with game engines. People used to insist real developers wrote everything in C++ from scratch. Now engines are standard. We forgot the argument. Kind of. Now the argument is which engine is best.
I've watched this pattern repeat many times. Something new comes, and there's an urge to decide whether we like it or not. Cell phones, operating systems, game consoles, frameworks, etc.
What Changed For Me
I used ChatGPT for a while. I went to meetups in Austin, San Francisco, New York. People talked about Cursor and Windsurf. It didn't click to me, I could not understand how ChatGPT could write code. I couldn't tell what the AI was doing versus what I was supposed to do.
Then I tried Claude. I liked the style, the design, the branding, the experience, and then I tried Claude Code.
I still wasn't sure what I could do with it. But I'd been learning threejs, so I started there. I asked Claude to help me build prototypes. The speed surprised me. I kept talking to it, kept building.
And that's when things shifted and finally clicked.
I had ideas I'd been carrying for years. Gameplay concepts. App ideas. System designs. Things I thought were good but never had time to build properly. With Claude Code, I could prototype them fast. Test them and see if they were worth pursuing. Most weren't, but now I could take them out of my system faster.
That's the real value. Not building faster—though that's part of it. The real value is knowing what not to build. Ideas I might have spent years on, I could kill in days.
It was another way to talk to a computer, one that didn't require me to translate my thoughts in English, into another language. So, there was one layer less between my brain, and the computer.
What the Tool Does and Doesn't Do
The way I see it, programming has two parts.
One part is thinking: solving problems, designing systems, deciding what to build and why. The other part is typing: syntax, APIs, boilerplate, looking things up in documentation.
I've outsourced the typing to AI. The thinking is still mine. I think of AI as a tool, but not just any tool—more like how I'm sometimes a tool too. When I hold a door open for someone, I'm not thinking deeply. I'm just executing. AI does the same for my code.
This isn't new. Auto-complete changed how I wrote Java. IDEs changed how I navigated code. Shader Graph changed how I made shaders. Each tool shifted what I spent my time on.
Claude Code is the same pattern for me, but just at a bigger scale. I still do a lot of thinking, even more than before, because before a lot of my thinking cycles would go towards finding the way to do something, towards searching the internet, now those cycles are freed up to things that require my unique ideas, not typing on a keyboard.
The parts I enjoy are still mine. If anything, I do more of that now because I spend less time on the rest.
If you love typing code, keep typing. If you love learning language syntax, keep learning. Use AI for the parts you don't enjoy. Or don't use it at all. That's fine too.
The question isn't whether the tool is good or bad. The question is whether it helps you do what you care about.
On Art
I love looking at art. Museums, Twitter, books. I'm not an artist, so when I see something beautiful, I wonder: how did they make this? What were they thinking?
AI-generated art (maybe we should not use the word Art yet?) doesn't hit the same way for me. When I look at it, my brain just thinks: noise plus prompt. Yes, you can trick me, but that's more on you than on me. Humans, we are easy to trick.
Something similar happened with CGI. When I was younger, I'd watch movies and wonder at impossible things. I remember watching a TV Show on Discovery Channel Latam, "La Magia del Cine" (Movie Magic). They showed how special effects, puppets, camera tricks, etc, worked. Then I learned how CGI worked, and some of the magic faded. It's still impressive—but different.
Maybe one day I'll connect with AI art. Today I don't.
We get to choose what we consume. That's a kind of power. But the choice should come from what we actually want—not from what someone told us we should want.
The Real Question
I'm not here to tell you AI is good or to tell you it's bad.
I'm here to say: don't think too much about good or bad. Think about what can positively affect you, your life, and the people and environment around you.
That might mean using AI. It might mean avoiding it entirely.
Close
If something might help you live better, at least give it a try. Form your own opinion, and be open to swing between both opposite sides.
Like AI for coding? Or navigating the world? Use it. Don't want it to make art for you? Don't use it. And if tomorrow you change your mind, that's ok too. Don't worry too much.
Look back to times when the internet came, cell phones, social media, video games, TV. There's probably always been a debate on whether those were good or bad. And the debate is healthy, picking a side blindly, might not. You choose.
I'm not pro, or against anything. But at the same time, I am.