Don’t get bot hurt. Get bot even.

If it saves time but costs taste, it’s a bad trade.

AI is good at saving time. That part is obvious. What’s less obvious is what gets spent along the way.

Speed feels harmless

When work gets faster and smoother, it starts to feel efficient and reasonable. You move on, check the box and call it progress, or at least productive enough to justify whatever comes next.

Speed doesn’t announce a cost. It just changes what you notice. The things that used to slow you down quietly stop insisting on a decision.

Judgment and taste aren’t gone. They’re just used less often.

Taste gets quieter

Taste is the difference between “this works” and “this is good,” between something that passes and something you’d actually stand behind if asked why.

It isn’t innate. It’s practiced. And like any practice, it weakens when it isn’t required.

AI doesn’t remove taste. It just doesn’t insist on it.

When choice gets easier

When every option arrives polished and confident, choosing starts to feel optional. You can revise later, ask for another version, or adjust one more time.

The moment where you would have stopped and decided doesn’t always show up. That can feel like momentum. Often, it’s just fewer interruptions.

You end up with more finished work and fewer clear reasons for it. Things don’t feel chosen so much as accepted. That’s why so much AI-assisted work looks fine and feels empty.

What time is actually doing

Saving time only matters if you know what you’re saving it for.

Otherwise, speed just helps you move faster through decisions you didn’t fully make. Nothing pushed back or asked you to explain yourself.

This isn’t a rejection of automation or convenience. Those are real gains. But taste is the part of the process that only shows up when something slows you down. Speed makes it easy to skip.

Final Bot Thought

If a tool saves you time but dulls your judgment, it isn’t helping. It’s just shifting the cost.

Before asking how fast something can be done, ask something else: is this making my decisions clearer, or simply easier?

Time is cheaper than it used to be.
Taste isn’t.

Bot Talk: The bots have entered the stadiums

This week, AI isn’t hiding in demos or product updates. It’s stepping onto two massive stages, .the Olympics and the Super Bowl, in very different roles

At the Olympics, AI comes with a name and a return badge. NBC’s AI guide, OLI, is back to help viewers navigate schedules, athletes and events across an overwhelming amount of coverage. Calm. Organized. Already knows the job.

OLI knows the hockey schedule. The rink is still figuring itself out.

Then there’s the Super Bowl, where AI gets loud. Commercials lean into bots, futurism, and “powered by AI” energy. Less quiet helper, more main character. The goal isn’t clarity — it’s attention.

That attention-seeking vibe is already causing friction.

After Anthropic teased its ad-free AI in a Super Bowl spot, OpenAI Sam Altman publicly pushed back — bot hurt, perhaps? — calling the message dishonest.

Even before kickoff, the bots were beefing.

🚀 Coming up next week…

Don’t get bot hurt. Get bot even.