About the use of generative AI
Intro
The increasing use of generative AI has flooded the internet with technical articles and infographics which weren’t created by humans.
This personal page contains technical writings and (sadly) I need to make clear about my position on using generative AI here. So, here we are.
Goals
- Explain that I don’t use AI for generating content for this website
- Present personal thoughts about using generative AI
- Present how I use AI
Non-goals
- Rant about AI
- Create a guideline of using AI
- Tell what’s good or bad about AI
Do I use AI? And what about the evil “algorithms”?
Well…
Let’s make it clear something: we’ve been using AI for decades. We’ve been using algorithms for millenia. If it somehow surprises you, go check what artificial intelligence and algorithms are. If you’re online, probably you use AI and doesn’t even notice it. Everybody uses algorithms.
Do I use generative AI?
Yes, but not here.
The LLMs have their own way to write (sometimes called “AI accent”). It is soulless, too much perfect, generic, sterile and without personality. Texts, even the technical ones, are not only the about words or what they are saying, but how they are saying and why they are saying.
Sometimes it’s enough to just AI-generated text where the other option would be only having nothing. It’s not the case here, where I would be perfectly fine in having nothing in this personal site or even don’t have a personal site at all.
You may not agree with me, and that’s ok. I’m not saying I’m right. On the
contrary, I think it’s too early to know what’s right about using LLMs. I also
believe this is the case where the technology evolved so fast that we don’t
exactly know how to use it. I only think that this is a mid-term approach, which
tries to leverage some benefits of AI without losing the authorship. If you
don’t agree with me, I’ll b happy to hear your opinion (since it’s not
generated by AI
Was any content in this website generated by AI?
NO. Again: NO. There’s no reason for me to generate a text using generative AI and post it here.
Why? If the content can be generated by an AI, you can ask your favorite LLM to do so. I won’t spend my time doing that. I’m not a “content creator”, I don’t post here because of money, I don’t have any pressure to do it regularly. Of course, I’m happy when I see people liking something that I posted here (e.g., when I wrote about Ruby and Matz shared it), but if no one reads, it’s ok. But I don’t know how can someone be happy being recognized for something that they didn’t do.
I only write something here if I have something to tell.
Do I hate generative AI?
Like any technology, hating it is pointless. The best we can do is try to find if, when and how it can be useful.
Do I generate code with AI?
Yes, but none of the projects that I post here were generated by LLM (or “vibe-coded”) yet. If some day I use an LLM to generate something, I’ll make it clear somewhere (e.g. adding Claude or Copilot as co-authors in commits).
However, I’m not against it by itself. If my job is to make something work and AI-generated code helps me do that, I think would be ok to use. But we need to be responsible for what we’re doing. If I can’t explain exactly what the code is doing, I wouldn’t deliver it.
Do I generate text with AI?
Yes, but not here. This is my personal page where I share my personal stuff. What I generate with AI is not personal and won’t be posted here.
Do I use generative AI in my personal projects?
I have some ideas of side projects integrating LLMs through their APIs, but their code will be 100% written by me. I work on side projects because I want to learn and because I want to have them fun with them, and I can’t learn something or have fun asking an LLM to do the dirty work.
Maybe someday I’ll need to do a personal project with a wider impact. Then I’ll consider it as work and if vibe-coding increases my productivity without losing the quality, then I’ll do it.
Please notice the difference: something personal that I do for fun and for learning I consider a side project and I don’t have any commitment for being productive while developing it; personal projects that are used by other people are work.