It was the best of times, etc.

On his fab­u­lous new blog, Marcin Wichary links to a post of mine, the one where I wrote:

What makes the AI chat­bots and agents feel light and clean, here and now in 2026? Is it an innate archi­tec­tural resis­tance to advertising, to atten­tion hacks, to adver­sarial crud? No — it’s that they are simply new! The lan­guage models in 2026 are Google in 1999, Twitter in 2009. Their vast con­joined industry of influ­ence hasn’t yet arisen … though it is stirring.

Marcin’s view is characteristically clear:

The AI com­mu­nity tends to say “this is the worst this will ever be” in response to criticism, but in a very learned sense, in many aspects it is also the best it will ever be.

This is useful: a sort of counter-mantra. The enthu­si­asts really do invoke “this is the worst AI will ever be” almost like a magic spell. Along the narrow tech­nical dimen­sion, the claim is cer­tainly true … but the tech­nical dimen­sion is not the only one, nor even the most important. There are com­mer­cial and eco­log­ical dimen­sions, too, and we can look at every other dig­ital system — literally every other dig­ital system! — for clues about tra­jec­to­ries from worst to best, best to worst.

Your claw does okay on the internet of 2026. How will it fare on the internet of 2029, which will surely be crowded with adversaries — hacker claws and trick­ster claws? Recall that the hackers and trick­sters are, as always, MUCH more moti­vated than you to field this software. Even if they are denied access to the tip-top models, their next-best instru­ments can com­pen­sate with volume and malevolence.

My strong hunch is that claw and coun­ter­claw will net out into a sort of cruddy detente. See exhibit A: email. Or exhibit B: the World Wide Web.

That’s the thing about technology: every­body gets it!