I’ve been using AI more and more over the last couple of years. What started as an occasional curiosity has gradually worked its way into just about every corner of my life. These days, there’s hardly a day that goes by where I’m not using it for something, whether at work, around the house, or just to explore an idea that’s been rattling around in my head.
And the pace at which it’s improving is pretty incredible.
In my day job, we’ve been using Microsoft Copilot for some time now. I’ll admit, the early experience was pretty clunky. It often felt like a solution looking for a problem, and getting something genuinely useful out of it could take more effort than just doing the work yourself. Fortunately, and with much insistence from our leadership and friends in IT, I held off on making any sort of indictment.
…everything has changed quite dramatically.
Between the latest generation of models and much slicker integrations with Office and SharePoint, it’s becoming indispensable. For someone whose days are typically filled with meetings, documents, decisions and an endless stream of information, it’s an opportunity to do considerably more with the limited time available.
But what really excites me isn’t necessarily what AI can do for me at work.
It’s what it makes possible outside of it.
Years ago, my good friend Matt and I used to spend evenings, sometimes well into the early hours of the morning, drinking beer or Red Bull and coding iOS apps and games – it was a wild world of mobile potential back then.
We did everything ourselves. Writing code, debugging, designing interfaces on paper first and then Xcode, figuring out how to make things work. It was a lot of fun, and there was something immensely satisfying about taking an idea and turning it into something that actually worked.
Of course, we also had day jobs…. and eventually growing families, increasingly busy schedules and all the other hustle and bustle of life started competing for that time.
The ideas never really stopped. Finding the time and energy to consistently do something with them was another story.
Which brings me back to AI. (Or perhaps I should start calling it SI: synthetic intelligence?)
Whatever we decide to call it, the arrival of capable AI agents has completely changed the game… and it will soon irrevocably change the world (assuming it hasn’t already.)
I often think about what Matt and I might have been able to build if we’d had access to these tools back then.
Today, I can take an idea and spin up what is effectively a small team to help me work through it. One agent researching a problem, another working through a technical challenge, another writing code or testing a solution. All working towards something that, not very long ago, would have required a considerable amount of my own time.
It’s a fascinating shift in how we can approach work. It feels great to be finally back into my GitHub account.
That’s not to suggest these things are infallible. Far from it. I’ve learned the hard way that giving an AI agent too much freedom without checking in can produce some pretty spectacular results, and not always in a good way… coffee bookings with unknowns that have reached out, commitments for follow-ups I wasn’t aware of, and so on…. thankfully I’ve never handed over financial access or a credit card, and it seems it will be a while yet before I cross that trust bridge.
There’s a reason people keep talking about having a human in the loop (HITL). The tools might be getting smarter, but judgement, direction and accountability still matter. Quite a lot, actually.
The more I use these systems, the more I’m realizing that the real opportunity isn’t simply to do the same things faster. It’s to reconsider what’s possible in the first place.
Projects that once seemed too time-consuming to pursue suddenly feel achievable. Ideas that would have sat in a notebook for years can now be explored in an afternoon or a Saturday morning. A team of agents can be spun up after dinner and work through the night, a personal backshift of sorts, providing a first product to review in the morning… And for someone who’s always enjoyed building things, that’s pretty exciting.
So, after a long absence, I figured it was time to get back into the habit of writing. Partly to share some of what I’m learning, partly to explore ideas, and partly because I’ve missed the creative side of putting something out into the world.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m still experimenting, making mistakes, learning what works and, occasionally, finding out what really doesn’t.
But I’m having a lot of fun with it.
And perhaps that’s as good a reason as any to get back in the saddle.