let's talk about ai, baby

become an ai wizard without losing your soul

On Feb 23, 2023 - almost three years ago to the day, I wrote ‘can everyone kindly shut the fuck up about ai.’

My, how the turns have tabled.

It is the year of our lady 2026 and have not, kindly nor otherwise, shut the fuck up about AI.

Far from it.

As Usher once said, this is my confession Pt 2.

confession pt 2

I’ve been afraid to admit this to you.

You being my both are true readers. The BATheads.

What’s the opposite of a parasocial relationship? Sarapocial? Yes. Sarapocial.

I’m in a sarapocial relationship with you all and am worried, nay, terrified, about what you’d think.

That you’ll judge. That it’s bad or cheating or ruining the planet.

I don’t use it for my writing. Not really. Whenever I try, I end up feeling gross and weird and end up rewriting it. Or when I don’t, when I keep the fully AI-written stuff, I feel gross after the way one does after watching porn.

Yes, i orgasmed, but at what cost?

I use it for everything but the creative stuff. Like how what’s his name said “make your life ordinary so your art can be insane”?

Flaubert. That’s who said it.

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

–Gustave Flaubert

Well, my brain makes my whole life feel insane and violent, especially the boring and mundane parts like scheduling and keeping track of ideas and obligations and 100 other things that ADHD + OCD make impossible.

The past year and especially the past few months, Claude Code has made all of that stuff...easy? Manageable? Fun? Regular, sort of, but not exactly* there’s a lot of dopamine happening. It’s addictive. It’s an addiction loop, many are saying. )

so what do you do with ai?

Yesterday a friend asked me what I do with AI.

“Websites,” I told her. “I make websites. For everything.”

Like for bits and dumb ideas and also for sharing stuff with and for clients. The first thing I made with it was a website for my friend’s bachelor party that was fake and dumb and full of jokes about cocaine. We spent all weekend sitting around talking about our feelings and didn’t follow the google doc I wrote up even a little bit which included, I must share because i am proud of these jokes:

• Fri night - Watch documentaries about strip clubs

• Sat night - Watch documentaries about the future and business opportunities there in

• Sun night - Call a sex hotline and each talk for 5 min about our deepest fears
  

my ‘chief-of-staff’ (actually gets crazy useful)

I built a Chief of Staff to manage my life - all my clients and deadlines and ideas. It updates in real time as I give it updates and it remembers everything I do. And perhaps most importantly, I built it to do things in alignment with my values, which it also remembers lol. Here are the values I put in there:

Every morning, I run the ‘chief-of-staff’ and get a big list of all the shit I gotta do.

Sometimes I can look at it and feel good. Other times, it overwhelms the bajeebus outta me, so I ask Claude Code to show me everything in an HTML web view where I can click little buttons to decide on what the next action is for each thing.

It’s not hooked up into anything - just a view on my local computer - but when I’m done, I copy all of the updates (which are just text) back to Claude (i had it put in a button that let me do that) and then Claude Code updates the files accordingly.

It’s pretty sweet:

i removed all the personal info obvi

my ‘ai thesis’

Ever since I was 9 years old scrolling through WWF forums and googling “big boobs big pictures cars”, I’ve felt a strange oneness with computers.

My favorite and best subject in school was math, especially geometry and especially proofs. If x, then y. If 0, not 1. Boolean as a cube, baby.

I built forums and created weird online games including Survivor: Ukraine, an internet version of the TV show Survivor in which strangers from the internet who somehow found my game were split into two tribes, competed in weekly online challenges, and voted each other off.

I’d code little websites. Run forums. Nerd shit.

And most importantly, I could search. I knew, before most, how to Google.

Not just use it, but use it well. How to filter for certain results, limit the results to certain date ranges or file types or whatever.

This, I believed back then and continue believing now, is why everyone thought I was “smart.”

I think we’re in that moment again, but with AI. Being good at it WHILE MAINTAINING AND ACTUALLY STRENGTHENING YOUR VALUES AND SOUL gives you a leg up, both in the world but also inside that very soul of yours that you must protect at all costs.

For me, that means using AI to help me manage my life so I can be an absolute psycho in my work. And for me it means using it in a way that makes sense to my brain, that’s creative, dumb, and full of bits galore.

and it seems like other people agree

I posted about the chief-of-staff setup on Twitter and it went viral.

I then decided I’d see if other people wanted to learn about this stuff and launched a cohort called Code For Creatives (built the whole website with claude code too).

$500 for 5 weeks of me teaching everything I know.

It sold out.

I then realized that there wasn’t a single time that worked for everyone, so I added a 2nd weekly slot (same material) and it sold out again.

We’re in week four now and I’m having a blast teaching it. Not just because I genuinely nerd out on this stuff, but because I get to wrestle in real time with the hardest questions that surround all this:

1. what do we do when the ai can do everything?

2. is this cheating? if not, why the fuck not?

3. what are the ethics around telling other people when you do and don’t use ai?

4. where do you draw the line? or do you have the ai draw it for you? it does good straight lines

5. what do you build when you can build anything? and why is the answer annoyingly, always, ‘taste.’

6. Is the obsessive building a coping mechanism for the terror of a brave new world run by muskbot lobsters?

7. are we human, or are we daincers

cohort 2 starts march 2nd

If you’re interested, the next cohort starts the week of March 2nd.

We’ve got 4 slots left now for $650. Once those sell out, I’ll start selling cohort 3 spots at $750. If you wanna grab one, click here and apply or just reply to this email.

So...what does any of this mean?

I have no idea. But I’m trying hard not to shame myself about enjoying something that I can make money doing. Big ups to Existential Kink tyvm.

I want to hear from you but first some FAQs:

i want to sign up but i have questions - lots of em!

There’s a bunch of info on the website here AND yes plz just reply to this or email me for answers.

where do i follow more of this??

I’m gonna write a lot more about this stuff, especially the ways I’m using it, at a different substack I made called codeforcreatives - you can sign up for that here:

I also send emails directly about it because I’m learning how to run things outside of Substack. If you wanna get those instead, or in addition, you can just sign up on the website at the bottom

is this goodbye?

what the hell are you out of your mind?! NO. This is hello, world.

I’m sorry. I had to.

But fr, this is me hopefully writing you a lot more and mostly not about this AI stuff lol. It’s me sharing the truth that sat atop the other truths and wasn’t giving them room to breathe.

I’ve got like five half finished essays about the kids. One about Helene. And like 100 more that I forget entirely. Hopefully Claude can remind me about those.

are you (alex) worried?

Yes, but I’ve always been worried.

are you (alex) more worried than normal?

Not really. But that’s because I’m excited. And as fritz something said, fear is excitement without the breath.

what if i just want the ‘chief-of-staff’ setup?

I’m in the middle of building that out into a standalone product that I’ll sell or give away, and then offer a 1:1 call thing where I set it all up for you and provide support etc. If you’re interested in that, let me know here.

why?

Prob the biggest question that requires a bigger answer. But in short:

1. I enjoy it

2. I enjoy helping others with it

3. I perhaps most enjoy not begging people for $8 subscriptions for Both Are True as much.

your turn - COMMENTS TIME

ok i wanna hear from you for real.

1. do you hate me?

2. do you hate ai?

3. where are you at with all this? how are you making sense of it?

4. are you sick of people talking about ai so much? do you wish they’d stfu about it? what do you wanna talk about instead let’s do it