The AI Overload
why does everyone have ai now
I'm tired of AI.
Every single app, company, and piece of software suddenly has an AI feature now. It feels like we've reached peak AI slop. Does adding "AI-powered" to your product description actually 100x your profit margins?
Why would I want an AI bot to recommend music to me? Why has everyone's profile photo suddenly transformed into "Ghibli art style" overnight? I don't watch anime, and I don't get the appeal of having an AI generate a cartoon version of myself. Lately I have noticed that LinkedIn especially is full of AI-generated posts. “… <INSERT AI GENERATED STORY>, and here’s what it taught me about B2B sales!”
But here's the thing – amid all the noise, there are some AI-powered projects and tools that I genuinely like (love is too strong) and use every day. These are tools that solve real problems and integrate seamlessly into my workflow rather than demanding attention for their own sake.
For my IDE, Cursor is absolutely king. Cursor is a fork of VS Code with thoughtfully integrated AI features that actually enhance the development experience. I've been using the "agent" feature extensively, and it's even helped me vibe-code a replacement for smokeping (blog post about that coming soon).
Cursor is better than GitHub Copilot – it's not even close. I really didn't see myself switching fully to Cursor and always kept a VS Code installation hanging around. But over the last two months, I've been exclusively using Cursor, and the "tab" completion feature has become intuitive.
What makes Cursor special is that it doesn't feel like AI bolted onto an editor – it feels like an editor that happens to be really smart.
I use Claude as my go-to “research tool” throughout the day. As a cloud engineer, I constantly need answers to various technical questions – whether it's diving deep into Kubernetes networking, understanding the nuances of different cloud provider services, or troubleshooting infrastructure issues.
I typically use the extended thinking setting combined with web search to ensure I'm getting accurate, up-to-date information. I have not been to stack overflow in over a year.
I only use Claude for work-related stuff tho. I've never asked it to write me a poem, generate a recipe, or answer non-technical questions.
Zapier is another tool I genuinely love, and I go way back with their platform. They've recently started adding more AI features, though I haven't explored those much yet. My relationship with Zapier goes way back. In 2017ish I was running a lead generation company for realtors (back when facebook ads actually did something), all automated with Zapier.
My first experiment combining AI with Zapier was a small project that created Spotify playlists from user prompts. It used the OpenAI API, Spotify's Web API, and Zapier to turn natural language descriptions like "sad, depressed, rainy day music" into an actual depressing playlist. It was kind of cool.
All this to say, I appreciate AI when it has genuine utility and integrates seamlessly into MY existing workflows. I don’t like it when I feel like using the AI is a second job or I spend more time tuning the AI than I do actually doing the task.
With AI agents starting to emerge as the next big thing and MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers recently appearing on the scene, I'm cautiously optimistic that we might be moving beyond the current phase of "AI for AI's sake" toward more thoughtful integrations that solve real problems.
Sorry for the rant. Happy Memorial Day Weekend!
Cheers,
Joe