statement on “artificial intelligence”

The term “artificial intelligence” (or AI) is being used in many different ways. In 2026, we are being bombarded with lots of new technologies being called AI. But the meaning of the term AI varies widely. A better word would be something like “new technologies.”

Many technical services are being marketed under the label “AI” (and with little sparkle icons). Sparkles used to mean, like … fairies! and magic! We are mourning that sparkle imagery is being hijacked to now mean AI to people, instead of our traditional, romantic sense of magic. Maybe Tinkerbell can sue the technology companies for copyright infringement?

We can’t think of anything less magical than a computer spewing forth mediocre answers generated by software that has ingested the entire content of the internet.

Large Language Models (LLMs)
The use of LLMs (“Large Language Models”) to do research or write text is not something we are using at this time. These LLMs are trained on the internet’s entire text content, and a lot of that is inaccurate, poorly researched, biased, incomplete or otherwise inadequate in our opinion. Plus! LLM output has been evaluated to be only 85-90% accurate, and their output can include completely fictitious results, known as “hallucinations.” “Garbage In, Garbage Out.”

That is completely unacceptable. We can do better than that. We will not use technologies which are that sloppy. We do our own work, with our own brains and hands. If we overlook something in our own research, we know what we did and we take responsibility for our work, whether accurate or mistaken. We will not be saying “But … ChatGPT gave that answer!” as if that is a good excuse for lazy or careless work. It is not.

Our poor human brains are already stressed out trying to process an overload of text, social media, and video content – let’s not degrade its functioning further by depriving ourselves of the step by step, real work in our professions by asking chatbots for answers and then uncritically accepting those answers as correct. (Are they? Hmmm …)

Something we do use! Photoshop features
We have been using some new technology capacities of Photoshop within the Adobe Creative Suite to edit photos. Useful functions include extending backgrounds and skies to fill larger spaces we need to fill for attractive website and print designs. They even have a “remove power lines” function now, which we used recently to quickly edit a home photo for the Green Homes Tour book. Saved so much time! So we are big fans of this particular application of, uh, … AI/new technologies.

We are not reflexively anti-AI. We will be happy to use what works to make our work faster and easier, especially if the tasks they replace are repetitive and if performing then adds limited nuance to our skillset.

What about Google?
At this point, the Google search engine is still … kind of … something we feel is mostly reliable if:

  • its indexing process is understood;

  • its more advanced search capacities are utilized for research;

  • and sufficient time and discernment used in performing Google research and evaluating the results.

  • (by the way, there is a cool Firefox extension that hides Google AI summaries at the top of Google search results)

It is extremely unfortunate that we do not have a healthy, competitive software business environment where multiple search engines are competing with each other. Google is a huge monopoly. The entire worldwide economy and business environment depends on it. Yet it is allowed to function as a private entity with minimal if any governmental oversight. Please, let’s break up this monopoly and get some healthy competition into this world of search! It will benefit us all.

Does anyone remember going to a library and looking things up in actual reference books? Those were the days! Those answers were grounded in more thorough research, although that information was likely generated within hidebound and fusty traditional institutions. And those old reference volumes could not be as up-to-date as modern search results can supply. At least the internet has banished the gatekeepers of information and opened the doors to a variety of resources. Kind of hard to go back to those days.

Bad for our brains
We also feel that it’s bad for our human capacities, and our brains, NOT to do our own actual work, step by step, so we know the actual landscape, shapes and specifics, of each step along the way. That’s how our ancestors on the African steppes figured out how to survive: by observing their environment, learning how to hunt and forage for food, thus refining their understanding of the world, day by day and year by year. We cannot become wise and mature, or develop expertise and refine our talents, by outsourcing our work to unknown online entities. It will only make us lazier and less adept at life.

Pace of change is too fast to be integrated
Also, the pace of technological change is way too fast to be well-integrated into most people’s lives. Being exposed to a huge amount of new input without allowing the time for it integrate it into our overall world view results in a fragmented and disorganized mental landscape. That makes us feel unsettled and disjointed. And we do not function optimally when we are fragmented, disjointed and overwhelmed. We need to reduce the firehose of sensory input (Tiktok, we’re looking at you), and the amount of new skills we have to learn every time an app changes its interface, to the point we can actually absorb it and apply it pragmatically in our lives.

Moving into the future …
At this point, we are keeping an open mind. As these new technologies evolve, there will probably be some super useful aspects that we will love to adopt and recommend to our clients. But we are taking it slowly, step and step, and waiting until truly useful technology is available. We’ll let other people spend their time playing with new tech, and take note when there’s a consensus something new is worthwhile. Then we’ll try it, and if it works well, be happy to say, “Wow! How cool is that!”

In the meantime, we’ll keep using our old-school design skills, along with solid, proven modern tech, to get work done for our clients.

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To keep ourselves happy, lets go outside; pet a dog; walk along the Boulder Creek Trail; talk to your friends; go to a coffeeshop and do some good old-fashioned people watching; listen to music; read a book; do some artwork; sing in the shower; and stay human!