The rule with a drop-off is you must acknowledge the drop-off. Last text I did this. This text I did this. I promise I will stop getting sick, flying to Mexico, and going to conferences. This past few weeks I did all three, sometimes multiple times. More text feels good. I’ve missed talking to you.

And we are here now, in this place. I feel great for once, and I’m pumped about my job on a level that I haven’t experienced in a minute. Feels like a green field. Lots of paths to take. Unsure which ones are “good”, but I’ll figure it out.

On letters, I mentioned the conference. One of the wild things about touching the third rail of large language models is that a third of the room got the religion, another third are confused & still processing, and the final third are viewed as full-throttle haters – although skeptics is probably the correct term.

The goal is not to plant your flag in a camp, but to be unclassifiable. Your position must exist in the uncomfortable middle space that forces deeper consciousness about what the thing is and can do and might do in the future. Mercifully, nobody knows what to do when asked how to use LLM to synthesize design research. It certainly can’t interview. It also can’t create new ideas. And a designer’s job is exclusively to create future states.

One steps back, recovers from a month that was hard on their body & psyche, looks around, and sees all of this. I have a little more compassion for the spiritually torched now. They’re trying to find answers, just as we all are. I see a lot of fear in the people who embrace LLM like it’s a religion. The world is uncertain; we may not have a livable planet in 50 years. Better to take a bet.

And that’s what it is. See it for its truth. As I walked away from the first night of the conference, someone asked “AI is basically just gambling, right?” Maybe a bigger chance of a payoff, sure. Maybe not. We’ll have to wait & see.