In the image: several projects in Perplexity app, highlighting a personal financial planning app project built in vibe code using Sonet. I only program the bare basics in jQuery, and I reduced several months of research and work into a few days for something that is just a personal project for research and experimentation.
I think it’s important to acknowledge that generative AI is here to stay, to change processes and significantly reduce the time required for creative work*. But it’s only a service that tries to compile, through probabilities, the most acceptable result based on a user’s prompt, using all the organic human knowledge that trained it. Its greatest strength, however, is trying to APPEAR fluent, and convincing us of that. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve identified inconsistencies in responses while working on very specific projects and got the explanation: “I assumed an answer I considered most satisfactory, but I didn’t actually research the topic” (2026, Sonet 4.6).
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Dunning–Kruger effect while experimenting with different projects using different models: if I don’t have the background to evaluate whether a result is good, average, or bad, then I simply don’t know what I’m doing. I become an employee of the machine, accepting what it gives me without questioning it, believing its output because it feels like magic. I don’t have enough knowledge to understand whether I’m being misled or deceived, I just believe and reproduce. I shorten my learning and critical development process because I no longer need to know; I just need to ask and trust the result.
Going back to my little science project, it’s important to recognize that, although functional, this exercise is a prototype and in no way meets the technical, security, data privacy, and compatibility requirements to be packaged as a real product. Many minds are needed for that.
*Creative work is still work. It takes time. It NEEDS the process. If we try to remove the process from within the process, the result becomes hollow, just like our feeds have been becoming lately.
Note: this text is organic, written without the aid of AI tools, and contains the author’s stylistic quirks and language habits. And no, I’m not anti-AI; I just like to remember that quality work takes time – usually more time than clicking “Generate.”
