内容来源：https://www.geekwire.com/2026/an-ai-haters-guide-to-keeping-llms-as-far-from-your-workflow-as-possible-in-2026/

内容总结：

一位资深科技记者亲述：2026年，我如何彻底“去AI化”生存

如果你长期关注GeekWire，或许对我的署名还有印象——我常报道太平洋西北地区的游戏产业，偶尔也涉足艺术领域。但我必须坦白：我并非人工智能的拥趸。凡是我署名文章，保证没有使用任何AI工具，至少是刻意为之。

坦白说，我对AI的态度就一句话：我没邀请这些工具闯入我的生活，我不会跟机器对话，它们在我的日常生活中几乎毫无用处，无论别人如何吹捧，我都拒绝使用，而我反感它们的入侵。至少当年的Clippy（微软办公助手）还知道什么时候该自动消失。

（每次我在公开场合表达这种观点，总会有人跳出来告诉我：这是未来趋势，小心被时代抛弃。说这话的，往往都是那些在AI上砸下重金的人——就像自己借钱押了黑方，却跑来告诉我押红方是傻瓜。省省吧，先管好你们自己的烂摊子。）

去年年底，我终于忍无可忍。我日常使用的几乎所有程序和网站，要么已经接入AI功能，要么正在威胁要这么做。YouTube强行推出视频和聊天“摘要”令人厌恶，而LinkedIn彻底变成了“机器人革命后的MySpace”，用户体验一落千丈。

于是，在2026年新年决心清单上，我写下了一条：尽可能切换到无大语言模型（LLM）的应用。过去四个月，我一直在践行这个目标。这是我的“脱AI生存报告”，献给那些同样受够了的读者。

浏览器篇

Vivaldi：没人真正喜欢Chrome

Chrome就像现代互联网的“化石燃料”——明知它浪费资源、替代品很多，但依然占据中心地位。随着Chrome一步步把Gemini塞进每个角落，我最初尝试视而不见，直到我不得不安装一个专门移除“AI模式”提示的扩展，才意识到：该换浏览器了。

可供选择其实很多，但不少Chromium内核的浏览器（如Arc、Maxthon）同样痴迷AI。Brave看起来不错，但它对加密货币的强调让我生疑。最终我选择了Vivaldi。它有些小怪癖（比如激活标签页是深色的，恰好与大多数浏览器相反），但响应迅速、注重隐私、不耗内存，几乎能兼容所有我以前需要用Chrome打开的网站。

Waterfox：名字直白，替代也直白

Firefox曾是我的另一款主要浏览器，但近年来稳定性越来越差。更糟的是，Mozilla也在大举押注AI——新CEO宣布全面转向与Opera类似的集成代理模型。虽然他们说AI功能可关闭，但对我不失为一个彻底抛弃Firefox的借口。最终我找到了Waterfox，这是一款有15年历史的Firefox分支，去掉了Mozilla近年来的诸多失误，也修复了一些我原本不知道的隐私问题。简单说：它就是“不犯傻版本”的Firefox。

办公软件篇

Paint.net：照片处理，Photoshop太夸张了

我的工作大量涉及写作，但偶尔也需要处理图片。Photoshop对我来说就像用风钻去钉钉子——更何况这还是Adobe的产品。GIMP等替代品虽不错，但最终我用的是免费软件Paint.net。它保持20年不变的Web 1.0网页设计令人怀念，而且完全满足了我这个永久新手的所有需求。这种“打开了就能用”的软件，现在太稀罕了。

LibreOffice：办公套件开源化

我用这款微软Office的开源替代品已有多年，但以前推荐它时总得加上“但是”——它与其他软件的兼容性糟糕，无法保存为.docx格式，别人打开LibreOffice文件时也常出乱子。这些毛病不知何时被悄悄修复了。如今，LibreOffice完美满足我所有的本地文字处理需求，这两年几乎没出过问题。我写的大部分文章，都是从打开一个空白的LibreOffice文档开始的。

Notetab Light：纯文本是最好的文本

如果不在LibreOffice里写作，我就在用这款老牌免费记事本替代品。有些时候——比如写HTML、手动编码或编辑维基——纯文本就够了。当初从Mac转向PC游戏时，朋友推荐了Notetab Light，他们是对的。这款软件提供字体大小、背景颜色、自动备份的自定义选项，还支持标签浏览。在微软连记事本都想塞进Copilot的今天，我可以信赖Notetab只做我让它做的事。

搜索与通讯篇

Startpage：去烦扰版Google

要找到Google搜索的完美替代品，目前根本没有。DuckDuckGo等独立搜索引擎还算接近，但有时我还是得回Google才能找到想要的结果。我期待有人能推出一款刻意回归Google“不作恶”时代的搜索引擎。目前最接近的是Startpage——它本质上是Google的匿名化版本，去掉了AI概览和追踪功能，只给你想要的结果。这比每次搜索都手动加“-ai”要方便得多。

Protonmail：Gmail难民的首选

这可能是最痛苦的一次迁移——我是Gmail的早期用户，账户里堆满了多年来的邮件，我的职业生涯几乎就活在这个网站上。但Google执意要把Gemini塞进Gmail，我只能走人。Protonmail主打隐私保护，但也是摆脱Gmail的最佳选择。设置自动转发很方便，界面类似，垃圾邮件过滤也从未让我失望。唯一缺点是只给1GB空间，我不得不成为“收件箱清零”的狂热信徒。

Bluesky：回到Twitter的过去（依然糟糕）

微博平台本来就是一种病态的存在。Grok的兴起不是我离开Twitter的唯一原因，但绝对是个重要因素。2024年我随大流转战Bluesky，再没回头。遗憾的是，Bluesky的体验表明：你讨厌微博的大部分原因，来自于刷微博的人本身。微博这个形式根本不适合深度讨论。此外，Bluesky团队最近大谈“氛围编程”，平台也开始无故崩溃——它是否会重蹈马斯克接管后Twitter的覆辙，只是时间问题。不过目前，Bluesky仍有其价值：聚集了大量作家、学者、记者和科学家，是获取新闻、欣赏艺术、推广项目和关注你喜欢的写手的好地方。

回归“傻瓜互联网”

说实话，在2026年的今天，完全让AI退出我的数字生活是不可能的。YouTube和LinkedIn强行把AI放在显眼位置，我的手机不断试图重新打开AI助手，未被LLM污染的阵地也越来越少。

但与此同时，这种环境让我重新珍视一些从前视而不见的东西：当你无法再默认某件作品是由人类创造时，媒体中的各种人类印记——铅笔痕迹、失误音符、填充词、话筒回授——反而有了新的吸引力。

顺便说一句，这就是我为自己任何错误找到的新理由：它们是我作为人类的证明。

过去四个月，我最大的感悟是：我并没有错过任何东西。在我写这篇文章时，工作相关的大语言模型给我的感觉，像是一群急切的解决方案在疯狂寻找与之匹配的问题。它们没有提高我的效率，反而阻碍了我的研究，大幅增加了我的个人碳足迹，而且正在引发一场经济崩盘。没有充分的理由去使用生成式AI。每当我表明反AI立场，总有人告诉我“你会失去一切”——但实际上，我一无所失。

如果这个故事有一个寓意，那可能就是：AI并非不可避免。

中文翻译：

长期关注GeekWire的读者或许会认出我的署名——我常年报道太平洋西北地区的电子游戏产业，偶尔也会涉足艺术领域。此外，我对人工智能毫无好感；若你在某篇文章上看到我的名字，那便意味着该文绝无AI参与创作，至少不是故意为之。

简要概括我的态度：我没要求过这些工具，我不跟这些机器对话，它们对我的日常生活几乎毫无用处，无论多少人为之唱赞歌我都拒绝使用，并且厌恶它们强行闯入我的世界。至少Clippy（微软回形针助手）还懂得知趣离开。

（每当我在公开场合发表此观点，总会有人跳出来说这就是未来，我恐将被时代抛弃。而说出这话的，无一不是在这场未来赌局中重注押注的人——就好像借钱把全部筹码押在黑方的人跑来告诫我，押红方才是傻子。得了吧，垃圾筐。删掉草稿，给我坐回去。）

去年年底，我的忍耐达到了临界点：日常使用的程序和网站，要么已经全面转向AI，要么正摩拳擦掌准备跟进。这通常只是令人厌烦，比如YouTube那些画蛇添足的视频和聊天“总结”；有时则直接破坏使用体验，比如现在的领英，活脱脱就是机器人革命后的MySpace。

我终于忍无可忍。作为2026年的新年计划之一，过去四个月我尽己所能地替换成了尽可能多的大语言模型无关应用。这篇体验报告，正是写给那些与我同样对此深恶痛绝的读者。

Vivaldi浏览器——似乎没人真心喜欢Chrome

谷歌Chrome堪称现代互联网的化石燃料。明知它消耗巨大、替代品众多，却仍盘踞在一切的中心。无论上班还是休闲，我常去的许多网站在其他浏览器中都无法完美运行。

随着Chrome逐步将Gemini硬塞进用户体验的每个角落，起初我试图视而不见。直到我安装了一款专门用来移除“AI模式”提示（我总是不小心点到）的扩展程序时，我才意识到：是时候换浏览器了。

事实证明选择很多，不过多数Chromium内核的替代品（如Arc、Maxthon）同样痴迷于AI。Brave一度看着不错，但过度强调加密货币让我心生警惕。

几经尝试后，我最终选择了Vivaldi。它有些古怪之处我仍在适应（比如当前标签页是暗色，这与大多数浏览器恰好相反），但它响应迅速、注重隐私、不占用过多内存，并且几乎完美兼容所有我过去依赖Chrome运行的网站。

Waterfox浏览器——名字直白，替代方案也直白

Mozilla Firefox曾长期是我另一款主力浏览器，但近些年我发现其响应速度和稳定性问题日益增多。事实证明，问题并非出在我身上：Mozilla近年来确实染上了“不肯安于现状”的毛病。

2025年底，Mozilla新任CEO宣布公司将全力押注AI，即将转向类似Opera等浏览器使用的集成智能代理模型。尽管Mozilla谨慎表示AI将设为可选项，但这仍成了我彻底抛弃Firefox、另寻他法的绝佳借口。

最终答案近在咫尺。我最初试用了Floorp，觉得名字这么蠢的东西说不定是神器，但很快就放弃了。

转而投奔Waterfox，主要是因为熟悉感带来的舒适。这是已有15年历史的Firefox分支，它移除了Mozilla近年来的诸多糟粕，并修复了一些我此前未曾察觉的隐私漏洞。许多方面它不过是“没犯蠢的Firefox”，但这一点已足以推荐。

Paint.net——有时候Photoshop纯属杀鸡用牛刀

网文创作往往与写作无关。我不擅长图像编辑，但偶尔仍需处理图片，所以电脑里必须备着像样的绘图软件。我用过一阵Photoshop，但对我这种最低需求而言，就像为钉颗钉子而备着台冲击钻。更糟的是，它还是Adobe的产品——但凡软件公司干过什么惹人厌的事，Adobe要么是始作俑者，要么正变本加厉。

市面上有Photoshop的优秀替代品，比如GIMP，但用得最顺手的还是免费软件Paint.net。一部分原因是我欣赏他们二十年来拒绝改版网站的执着——看看那优美的Web 1.0设计——但这软件确实能满足我这个永久新手的所有需求。它来自那个程序只为“好用”而存在的时代，而非将你困在其消费网络中。

LibreOffice——我的办公套件开源化

我用这款Microsoft Office的开源替代品已有多年，但此前每次推荐都需附带免责声明。LibreOffice能完成我需要的所有操作——表格、文字处理、直接转PDF——但与其他同类软件兼容性极差。它无法将新文档保存为.docx格式（.doc可以，但.docx不行），而且当别人用其他程序打开LibreOffice文件时常常乱码。

这个问题不知何时悄然解决了。我在新电脑上重装了LibreOffice，使用过程中发现先前的所有毛病都不复存在。如今它完全能满足我本地文字处理的所有需求，近两年几乎运行得完美无瑕。我几乎每篇文章都从本地空白的LibreOffice文档开始创作。

Notetab Light——纯文本也能是最好的文本

不用LibreOffice时，我就用这款老牌免费记事本替代软件。有时，比如写HTML、手写代码或编辑维基时，纯文本就是你全部所需或所求。

多年前我在Mac上用过类似软件。2000年代转向PC游戏后，朋友推荐了Notetab Light。他说得没错，从此NoteTab成了我每台新电脑上最先安装的程序之一。

Notetab Light能为最基础的文本提供丰富的自定义选项，比如字号、背景色、自动备份，还支持标签页浏览，方便参照。在这个微软试图将Copilot塞进包括记事本在内所有程序的年代，我可以信赖NoteTab只执行我下达的指令。

Startpage——名副其实的谷歌清爽版

为谷歌搜索寻找合适替代品时，我遇到的问题是：根本没有。有些独立搜索引擎接近目标，比如DuckDuckGo，但偶尔仍需回到谷歌才能找到所需结果。我希望不久后能有人推出功能完善的搜索引擎，刻意复刻谷歌“不作恶”时代的模样。

目前最接近的是Startpage，它本质上是谷歌的匿名化工具。它去除了AI概览和追踪功能，只给你呈现真正想找的内容。这比每次搜索末尾手动加上“reddit”或“-ai”要方便得多。

Protonmail——从Gmail逃亡的人们

这或许是我最痛苦的一次切换，毕竟我是Gmail的早期用户。我的账户里层层叠叠堆积着几乎贯穿整个职业生涯的旧邮件。我的人生历史就活在那个网站上——这多少要怪我从不删除或本地归档任何内容。但谷歌执意要将Gemini无缝嵌入Gmail，所以我只能离开。

Protonmail通常以隐私保护（如端到端加密）为卖点，但它也是任何弃用Gmail的人首先会考虑的替代品。设置自动转发轻而易举，界面与Gmail相似甚至完全相同，其垃圾邮件过滤功能也从未令我失望。唯一缺点是存储空间仅为1GB，远不及新Gmail账户，所以我现在不得不成为“收件箱归零”的狂热信徒。

Bluesky——曾经的推特（依然糟糕）

微博客平台当然是种病态存在。它们助长最无用的交流方式。但它们在快速获取信息方面确实好用，至少对我的工作而言，这是必要的邪恶。

Grok的持续霸屏并非我弃用推特的主因，但也是重要因素。2024年我随大流迁移到Bluesky，除了偶尔因“灾难综合征”回头看看，再没回过推特。

遗憾的是，当前Bluesky的总体体验表明，你对微博客的厌恶很大程度上源自微博客用户本身——这与平台无关。微博客天生不适合深度讨论或复杂表达。要么你试图表达复杂想法，结果读起来像电报；要么放弃，只用只言片语交流。

此外，Bluesky团队近期一直在吹捧“氛围编程”的好处，而这与该平台新近毫无预兆崩溃的倾向不谋而合。Bluesky何时会陷入与马斯克接管后推特相同的智能代理地狱，不过是时间问题。

不过，目前Bluesky仍有其价值。它大概相当于2014年左右的推特，为作家、学者、记者和科学家提供了线上家园。虽然它也充斥着大量无趣的“觉醒警察”和 troll 账号，但Bluesky依然是个有趣的地方：获取新闻、欣赏艺术、推广项目、关注你喜爱的作家——（以及我）。只不过在刷Bluesky时，你得无视那根缓慢燃烧的引信。

让愚蠢的互联网回来

2026年，想让AI完全退出我的数字生活已不可能——真遗憾。YouTube和领英这类网站不断将其置于最显眼处，手机也总试图重新开启AI助手，而拒绝大语言模型污染的阵地正日益萎缩。

但与此同时，当前环境也让我重新珍惜起某些过去从未在意的事物。当你不再能理所当然地认为某个作品出自人类之手时，媒体中人类不完美的痕迹便焕发出新的魅力：铅笔痕迹、错过的音符、填充词、扬声器反馈。

顺便说一句，这就是我为自己任何错误找到的新借口——它们证明我是人类。

过去四个月里，我最大的感悟是：我并未觉得自己错过了什么。在撰写本文时，工作相关的大语言模型给我的印象，不过是疯狂寻找匹配问题的一系列解决方案。它们没有像广告中那样提高我的效率，反而阻碍研究，大幅增加个人碳足迹，并且正被一群蠢货组成的“末日军团”用来引发经济崩溃。使用生成式AI没有任何正当理由。每当我表明自己反AI的立场，总有人警告我会失去一切；实际上，我什么都没失去。

如果这个故事有一个寓意，或许就在于此：AI并非什么不可避免的东西。

英文来源：

Longtime GeekWire readers might recognize my byline from my frequent coverage of the PNW’s video game industry, as well as occasionally dipping into the arts. I am also not a fan of artificial intelligence; if you see my name on an article, that’s a guarantee that no AI was used in its production, at least not deliberately.
To briefly summarize my feelings on the topic: I did not ask for these tools, I do not speak to these machines, I find them to be of little if any use in my day-to-day, I refuse to use them no matter how often their praises are sung, and I resent their intrusion. At least Clippy understood when he wasn’t welcome.
(Whenever I air this opinion in a public venue, someone usually pops up to tell me that this is the future and I risk being left behind. These inevitably turn out to be people who are heavily invested in that future; I am being told that only fools bet on red by people who borrowed money to put all their chips on black. Cool story, slop bucket. Discard the draft and sit back down.)
Towards the end of last year, I hit a saturation point where many of the programs and websites that I use on a daily basis had either pivoted to AI to some degree or were actively threatening to do so. This was often just obnoxious, like YouTube’s unnecessary video and chat “summaries.” At other times, it actively made the experience worse, such as the entirety of modern LinkedIn, which has come to look like MySpace after the robot revolution.
I’d finally had enough, and as one of my New Year’s resolutions for 2026, I’ve done my level best for the last four months to switch to as many LLM-free apps and options as is realistically possible. This is my trip report on the experience, as a hand towards those of you who’re as sick of this as I am.
Vivaldi – Nobody really seems to like Chrome
Google Chrome is the fossil fuel of the modern Internet. We know it’s wasteful and that alternatives exist, but somehow it’s still at the center of everything. There are a number of sites I visit regularly, both on and off the clock, that don’t work, or don’t work as well, in any other browser.
As Chrome continued to gradually force Gemini into every individual aspect of its user experience, I tried to ignore it at first. Then, as I installed an extension specifically to remove the “AI Mode” prompt that I kept clicking on by mistake, I realized the time had come to switch to a new browser.
As it turns out, I was spoiled for choice, although many of the available Chromium options (Arc, Maxthon) are just as obsessed with AI. Brave looked good for a while, but its emphasis on crypto makes me suspicious.
After some experiments, I ended up on Vivaldi. It has a few quirks I’m still getting used to (for example, your active tab is the dark one, which is precisely the opposite of how it works in most other browsers), but it’s responsive, privacy-focused, doesn’t tank my RAM, and works well enough with almost every website that I used to need Chrome for.
Waterfox – Obvious name, obvious replacement
Mozilla Firefox had been my other primary web browser for quite a while, but in recent years, I’d noticed increasing issues with its responsiveness and stability. As it turned out, it wasn’t just me; Mozilla has developed a real problem in recent years with leaving well enough alone.
Then, towards the end of 2025, Mozilla’s new CEO announced that the company plans to go all-in on AI, with an imminent shift to the same kind of integrated agentic model that’s used by other browsers like Opera. While Mozilla’s been careful to say that its AI will be optional, that still struck me as a good excuse to finally throw out Firefox and look for something else.
As it turned out, the solution was fairly close to home. I’d initially checked out Floorp, on the basis that anything with a name that dumb had to be a killer app, but bounced off of it early on.
Instead, I ended up with Waterfox, which is primarily due to the comfort of the familiar. Waterfox is a 15-year-old fork of Firefox that omits many of Mozilla’s recent missteps, as well as addressing a few privacy issues that I hadn’t previously known Firefox had. It is, in many ways, just Firefox, but Not Stupid, which is enough to get it a recommendation.
Paint.net – Because sometimes Photoshop is overkill
Much of writing for the Internet isn’t writing. I am not good at image editing, but it occasionally becomes necessary, so I need to have a decent art program on my machines. I used Photoshop for a while, but for my bare-minimum purposes it’s always been a bit like keeping a jackhammer around in case I need to drive a nail. Worse, it’s an Adobe product, and if there’s something a software company has ever done that’s annoyed you, Adobe did it first or is doing it more enthusiastically.
There are a few decent alternatives to Photoshop out there, such as GIMP, but I’ve gotten the most used to the freeware Paint.net. Some of it is because I appreciate their stubborn refusal to rework their website in the last 20 years – look at that beautiful Web 1.0 design – but Paint.net does everything that I, a permanent novice, need it to do. It’s a welcome dispatch from an era in which programs just worked, instead of trying to ensnare you in their consumer web.
LibreOffice – Open-sourcing my office apps
I’ve been using this open-source replacement for Microsoft Office for years, but before recently, all my recommendations always came with a caveat. LibreOffice did everything I needed it to do – spreadsheets, word processing, direct conversion to .pdf – but played notoriously poorly with other applications in its lane. It couldn’t save a new document as a .docx (.doc, yes, but not .docx) and frequently went haywire whenever someone tried to open a LibreOffice file in another program.
That got quietly ironed out at some point without my noticing. I’d reinstalled LibreOffice on a new computer, and over the course of using it, I noticed that all my previous problems simply no longer applied. It’s now a perfectly viable alternative for all my local word processing needs, and has been working almost flawlessly for the last couple of years. Almost every piece I write starts locally, with a blank LibreOffice document.
Notetab Light – Plain text can be the best text
If I’m not writing in LibreOffice, I’m using this long-running freeware Notepad replacement. Sometimes, such as when you’re writing HTML, coding by hand, or filling out a wiki, plain text is all you need or want.
I had a similar app on my Mac way back in the day. When I made the switch to PC gaming in the 2000s, a pal recommended Notetab Light to me as a solid alternative. They were right, and ever since, NoteTab has always been one of the first things I install on a new computer.
Notetab Light is a useful way to get more customization options out of the most basic text imaginable, such as font size, background color, and automatic backups, with tabbed browsing for easy reference. In a day and age when Microsoft is trying to cram Copilot into everything including Notepad, I can rely on NoteTab to only ever do exactly what I told it to do.
Startpage – Google without the hassles, literally
The problem I’ve encountered with finding an adequate replacement for Google Search is that there isn’t one. A couple independent search engines come close, such as DuckDuckGo, but every so often I still have to go back to Google to get the results I need. My hope is that before too much longer, someone will come out with a functional search engine that’s a deliberate throwback to Google from its “don’t be evil” era.
Right now, the closest thing to that is Startpage, which is essentially an anonymizer for Google. It removes the AI overview and the tracking functions in favor of just giving you some semblance of what you’re actually looking for. It’s a little more convenient than simply adding “reddit” or “-ai” to the end of every search you make.
Protonmail – For Gmail refugees
This might be the most painful switch I’ve made, as I was an early adopter on Gmail. My account has fossilized layers of old emails that go all the way back to almost the beginning of my career. My history lived on that website, which is partially my fault for never deleting or locally archiving anything. Google keeps trying to inextricably bind Gemini into Gmail, though, so away I go.
Protonmail is generally marketed on the basis of its privacy measures, such as end-to-end encryption, but it’s also the natural first port of call for anyone swapping off of Gmail. You can set up auto-forwarding with ease, the UI is comparable if not identical, and its spam filters have yet to fail me. The only real drawback is that it gives you a fraction of the space of a new Gmail account, at “only” 1 GB, so now I have to be one of those “inbox zero” zealots.
Bluesky – What Twitter used to be (still terrible)
Microblogging platforms are, of course, a disease. They encourage the worst kinds of useless communication. They are also really good for quickly gathering information, so at least for what I do, they’re a necessary evil.
The ongoing prominence of Grok wasn’t why I stopped using Twitter, but it was a non-trivial factor. I joined the general exodus to Bluesky in 2024 and haven’t looked back, outside of the occasional bout of trainwreck syndrome.
Sadly, the overall Bluesky experience as of now indicates that most of what you hate about microblogging is due to microbloggers, and that’s platform-agnostic. Microblogging is simply a poor format for nuance or extended discussion. Either you try to express something complicated and your thoughts read like a telegram, or you don’t and you’re communicating exclusively in sound bites.
In addition, the Bluesky team has been talking up the benefits of “vibe coding” recently, which suspiciously coincides with the platform’s newfound tendency to crash without warning. It’s likely not a question of whether Bluesky ends up in the same agentic hell as post-Musk Twitter, but when.
For right now, however, Bluesky has its uses. It’s Twitter c. 2014 or so, providing an online home for a murderer’s row of writers, academics, journalists, and scientists. While it’s also got an inordinate supply of humorless wokescolds and troll accounts, Bluesky is still an interesting place to get news, see art, promote projects, and keep up with all your favorite writers. (And me.) While scrolling through Bluesky, however, you have to ignore its slowly burning fuse.
Bring back the dumb Internet
It’s not possible to get AIs all the way out of my digital life in 2026, more’s the pity. Sites like YouTube and LinkedIn constantly put it front and center, my phone’s constantly trying to turn AI assistance back on, and the handful of holdouts against LLM infestation slim down by the day.
At the same time, however, the current environment has given me a new appreciation for certain things that I never used to think twice about. When you can no longer take it for granted that something was produced by a human, there’s a new appeal to any media’s telltale signs of human imperfection: pencil marks, missed notes, filler words, speaker feedback.
That’s my new justification for any mistakes I make, by the way. They’re the proof I’m human.
My primary takeaway from these last four months, however, has been that I don’t feel as if I’ve missed anything. At time of writing, work-related LLMs primarily strike me as a series of solutions in a frantic search for matching problems. They don’t improve my efficiency as advertised, they actively impede my research, they dramatically expand my personal carbon footprint, and they’re being used to bring about an economic crash by an all-dork incarnation of the Legion of Doom. There’s no good reason to use genAI. Whenever I mention my personal anti-AI stance, I usually get told that I’m at risk of losing everything; practically, I’ve lost nothing.
If this story’s got one moral, that might be it. There’s nothing inevitable about AI.