Is AI coming for me or not?

 Come at me bro.

If you've been anywhere outside or online in the last 2 or 3 years, you know that we are in the gold rush of the 2020s - Artificial Intelligence. At first, I thought it was just large language models like ChatGPT, but increasingly I'm seeing that the world wants to put AI everywhere - in our fridges, our underwear, heck, I even ordered a sub last week and had to ask them to hold the AI. 

I've got some opinions on AI. I've certainly looked it in the face and played around with it. I'm not one of those "not in my backyard" type folks. I've tried to implement it in my work, talked through a few problems with it and even wrote an academic paper about the application of AI in disaster communications for an insurance company. I know, I'm an absolute riot at a party. 

But more and more, I'm not liking AI. And I don't think it has so much to do with the product itself, I recognize it as the next step in technological advancement and that it's in an imperfect early phase. It's how it's being implemented and pushed by the tech sector that has me annoyed and frustrated.

At the most basic level, CoPilot, Microsoft's AI model, has been pushed to our software at work. Which wouldn't be an issue but for the fact that every document takes an extra 30 seconds to load while Copilot pre-reads it for me. Or every time I right-click to copy something, the Copilot option is up there. And yes, I know Control-C is there, but I want to keep my hand on my mouse, quit trying to control my life! 

Even more frustrating is its integration into our search. At first, I thought it might be useful, but it's all but destroyed Google. I've received demonstrably incorrect answers from Gemini AI, and it has positioned itself as the first stop when I use the search. 

And I think this is where we're at the crux of our modern world - we're happy to gobble shit up long before it's ready. Generative AI is, at this point in late 2025, completely mediocre. Yes, it can write, but it doesn't do it well. I will, I know that, but it doesn't at present. It's kind of like how when/if you buy a game on day 1 and you still need to do an update to make it work. Brand new things are not ready for market, yet we're happy to let it go out. 

Ok, enough old man rant. But a couple of other thoughts. 

I saw an ad today that made the claim that our lives are twice as busy as they used to be, and in order to SURVIVE - yes that was the word used, survive - moving forward, we would need AI to help us. What happened to the dream of this technology making our lives easier? Like, shouldn't we be granted more breaks and more time off since the computers are doing so much more work? 

But more concerning is that I've heard and seen a lot of recent discussion about AI being in a bubble. A bubble that's ready to pop. Today I saw an article that said the AI bubble is 17x larger than the dot com bubble - and the chart is pretty wild to see. So like - if we need this to survive and it's about to burst - um. What? Like I can fix my dryer so I'm sure I'm ok but like we're gonna be seeing a lot of people jumping off very tall narrow buildings pretty soon if any of this is to be believed. 

But then. Maybe why worry? If it's all gonna collapse or it's plateaued - another claims I've seen - then this really is as good as it gets and it's really not much of a threat. Maybe it all adjusts itself soon enough and we can get back to playing lawn darts and smoking in the car. 

Only time will tell. 

Repair Guy

 Well, speaking of being an impostor, I spent the last weekend pretending I'm an appliance repairman. That's twice this month I've had a washing machine apart in the house to fix it. It was the dishwasher earlier this month, this weekend it was the clothes washer.

I joked to Rhonda as she was lending me a hand with the dishwasher that when I die and she goes through my photo reels, it won't be salacious photos of me with another partner, it'll just be thousands of pictures of the wiring harnesses, pump innards and valve bodies. Scandalous nudity indeed. 

I said it earlier this year; on one hand, I'm grateful that I have the knowledge to do some of these repairs - and the know-how to watch YouTube videos and read exploded view drawings on Parts Select. It not only saves me money but it helps when things go wrong to be able to handle the situation until I can get someone out to fix it. 

On the other hand, I blew a full evening and an entire weekend fixing this goddamn thing. I had other things I wanted to do. But I got it fixed. Eventually. I think I ran through every single other system in the dryer and was on the last one before I found the problem - a dirty lid switch. 

Which is where I argue that doing these repairs is much harder for me as an amateur than it would be for a professional repair person. They've seen it all before and probably would have gone, "Oh, these Amana washers, 9 times out of 10 it's a dirty lid switch." They'd then proceed to spray it with some weird shit called "Miracle Repair All" and give me a bill for $500. I sprayed it too - I guess my time is worth $500. 

But I suppose that's just being a dad and owning a home. At least I got all fixed. And you won't catch me complaining about it when it helps me fix my guitar or an amp that's on the fritz. 

Oh, and these photos? They're not just from this weekend's challenge. There are photos from the clothes washer, dishwasher, camper, clothes dryer and Jonas's computer. All from the last year or so. 

Maybe I got into the wrong line of work. 

Impostors and Impostor syndrome

As I enter midlife, I'm pursuing creativity more in my life. And not just as a hobby or pastime, but as something that defines me and as the foundation I want to set my career and life on. I've always been creative, but my creativity was never properly encouraged growing up. For a long time, I thought that meant I didn't have as much creativity as others. As I've matured, I recognize my creativity is very different from others, and they didn't know how to process that. 

But especially when you're young, it's not easy to see that. So it's made it hard for me to enter the creative realm, and like many people in my position, I've really struggled with impostor syndrome. Struggled to the point where co-workers have had to actively tell me I am worthy of what I have. It's a hard thing to work through. 

Which is why I'm floored when I come across stories of real impostors. I don't encounter a lot of real impostors in my life (or at least they're really good at imposting, so I don't recognize them). But every so often, you hear stories of them.

For example, I've really been into police bodycam and dashcam videos lately. I don't know why. I bear witness to enough violence and vehicular carnage in my neighbourhood to satiate that urge. One of the videos I watched recently was of a group of officers investigating a guy who was pretending to be a cop. It's pretty cringey to watch since you know from the very start that the guy isn't a cop. For someone who feels like an impostor in a place I've been asked and encouraged to be, it makes my skin positively CRAWL to watch this guy try and squirm his way through this. I just don't know how he does it. 

Or maybe one of the more famous and egregious impostors is the story of Tania Head (or so she called herself). Tania claimed to have escaped from the impact zone of the South Tower during 9/11. But, as this blog is likely leading you to see, she wasn't. She wasn't even in the US. The whole story is told in some depth in the documentary, The Woman Who Wasn't There. And she didn't just claim to be a 9/11 survivor. No no no. She actually took control of a couple of 9/11 survivor support groups, led tours of the WTC area and was a very visible face in the survivor community. Until the New York Times started meddling in her past.

Watching impostors like that gives me much the same gross feeling inside as watching urban explorers in places they shouldn't be. It all seems very fun right up until you're going to get caught. Then there's no way out. 

I sometimes have an urge to create a different personality. Or create a second me that's maybe a little wilder, more daring. I'm not even talking about being an impostor as much as just having a second personality that amplifies certain parts of my own persona. Maybe that's the kind of place where impostors come from. Maybe the cop dude watched body cam videos like me and just pursued that interest in the wrong direction. They say Tania Head suffered from some lack of empathy in her own life and maybe saw the 9/11 survivors as a place where she could find love. 

I don't know where it comes from, but it's fascinating to watch people who have dug themselves so deeply into a lie. And it always makes me wonder where it started. 

Leave me a comment as an impostor below! 

The Return of Rush

Back in our radio days, The Navigator and I had a "Trilogy of Rock". Rush, Clutch and Motorhead. 

Unfortunately, neither of us would ever see Motorhead, but we've both been able to see Clutch and Rush together over the years. We saw Clutch a couple of years ago in Saskatoon and saw Rush in Calgary in 2015 on their final tour. 

Or so we thought. 

It was to my great delight yesterday that I opened up YouTube and saw a video that was only a few minutes old from Rush called "Geddy and Alex Send a Message to Rush Fans". Rush is back, baby.

They're reuniting with German-stickswoman Anika Nilles, who, per the video, recently played with the late Jeff Beck's band. I admit, I hadn't heard of her before yesterday, but the videos I've seen have been promising. She certainly has the chops. And if Ged and the other guy think she's good enough, then I trust she is. 

I'm glad to see the guys back at it. It always bugs me when talented folks aren't playing. I know it's selfish as a fan to say that, but there's always a pretty good reason for musicians to stop playing together. It makes me sad that bands like Rage Against the Machine don't play together. There is too much talent in the surviving members of Rush to leave them in a retirement home. 

Tickets go up for sale next week, and I expect I can't afford to go to Toronto for the show. But boy, it's tempting to see them again. 

One more time.