Allowing LLMs web and terminal access was one of the dumbest moves humanity ever made
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
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Many of the most practical uses I've heard for AI are cleaning up messes AI caused.
I used the AI to destroy the AI.
Yea.
Frankly, it may be the core of my anti-AI stance (in the short term) - that it will inevitably make technology inhospitable to humans, uninhabitable and incomprehensible too.
I read a few reactions from security types on the barrage of security issues that came out from AI firms, earlier this year. And the overall sentiment was to lean into using AI more to keep up with AI security discoveries. To go faster and faster and ride the AI more and more.
Which completely amounts to turning our tech over to AI and resigning as “supervisors” who won’t be able to navigate and understand the tech on their own anymore, not because of a lack of skills as many talk about, but simply because they didn’t build it and the process that did build it didn’t do it with humans in mind. Which then becomes a downward spiral with a positive feedback loop leading a mass of technology that just doesn’t need humans any more or is at least uninhabitable for us.
It wasn’t long ago that people lamented not being able to repair their own cars, and computers too. Old fashioned maybe, but I suspect it’s a value system worth evaluating rather seriously.
You would enjoy a part of this essay talking about the Airline's experience dealing with automation:
They realised that many pilots flying highly automated jets were becoming what Vanderburgh called “Children of the Magenta Line”.
But you see, we have become what I call children of the magenta. [Note: In modern cockpits, the magenta line is the brightly colored route shown on the flight display, a digital path generated by the navigation computer.] You know, we think we have to have those magenta lines on the map and that magenta V-bar that’s steering us toward that line, or for some reason, the plane won’t fly.
...
That’s why his core message is:
We are not automation managers. We are captains and pilots, and by our aviator skills, we are to ensure the vertical and lateral path of these planes at all times. We will use the wonderful tools of automation that have been provided to us to help us with that task. But when the automation is not maintaining the intended flight path, we will turn it off and maintain the path by our skills.
Automation excels in routine situations, but it can’t improvise when things go wrong. In Vanderburgh’s words:
Automation lacks the ability to create flexible responses to unanticipated changes in flight path requirements. So in these circumstances, a lower level of automation should lower workload and thereby preclude us from becoming task-saturated and losing our situation awareness.
It's an interesting historical frame of this AI automation downward spiral you describe.
Thank you!!
I haven’t read the essay, just your extracts.
But I wanted to highlight the possibility of an “automation” (AI, autopilot, robots etc) that are capable of responding in the flexible ways we value about our own minds. Because it can lead to an even greater exile from our world, and personally I think its likelihood is being dangerously dismissed and ignored.
Before any AI apocalypse scenario materialises, one in which truly intelligent automation works well could very well occur. And it would leave little to no room for human participation. A plane that doesn’t even have a cockpit, if you will. A car without a steering wheel. A tech stack that is just alien to humans. Yes, “ideally” we’d be much freer from drudgery and able to pursue happier lives. But there’d be a trade off I think, and no longer being true members of our own society seems to me the start of it.
Thanks again for the essay!
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
It'll be like a technological singularity except it's just shitty and incomprehensible, not actually self-aware.
I mean … is the singularity a good thing? I’ve never delved into whatever discourse there is around the idea, but it seems strange the way it’s treated as a necessary good. Fanatical even.
Almost like it’s the only way to continue to feel ecstatic about technology the more one uses and builds it. So anyone unable to let go of the “magic” feeling needs to cling to the dream of the singularity when they could, you know, “touch grass” and accept being human.
Yep, we’re using AI to help review code written by AI. You have to fight fire with fire else you’ll be overwhelmed with code that careless people generate and don’t bother to review.
overwhelmed with code that careless people generate and don’t ~~bother~~ have the knowledge or skills to review.
Yo dawg, I heard you like AI...
Boomerang that shit!