I’m a technologist and I drink tea. While not everyone has jumped on the love-ai-or-hate-ai bandwagon, a lot of us have been grappling with how the recent advances in artificial intelligence and its availability to businesses and the public at large – whether knowingly or unknowingly – impacts our work and personal lives.
I’ve crossed paths with AI recently while working on Cascadia Teahouse in two ways:
The fun!
While pivoting to develop tea-themed mobile games as a solopreneur, I’ve set up an LLC, got a small business mentor through SCORE, started working on my Lean Canvas (a lightweight, workable version of a business plan that is tailored to getting stuff done, not convincing VCs to fund you), and used my favorite go-to tech resource – O’Reilly – to learn about how to do visual design stuff using Canva (a pro subscription is well within reach, whereas a degree in visual design or even hiring a contractor is not (yet)). Canva has some generative AI tools available for creating static images, videos, and text in your “brand voice” from short prompts and adjustments.
The not-fun!
There is so much advice out there targeting people who’ve newly quit their corporate lives and are trying to figure out how to sell their expertise, along the lines of “Hey You Starting Your Online Business! Here’s how to use AI!” At issue for these folks is generating enough content consistently to curry favor with the algorithms. (This is not a new concept. Junichiro Tanizaki in his 1933 essay In Praise of Shadows wrote with dismay about changing one’s voice to sound better on vinyl recordings, “to curry favor with the machines”.)
AI pipelines to the rescue.
I appreciate Sabrina Ramonov’s work at https://www.sabrina.dev/ as a fantastic way to jump in and start playing with AI tools. I totally approve of using tools to let you adapt your original content to the form and style of whatever social media platforms you’re using. But I really hate finding blog entries that purport to be a useful guide to local spots for afternoon tea, only to find that they’re just cheap genAI-fueled plagiarized Yelp searches in disguise. An automated rewrite of information already on the internet without any sort of value-add – an expert’s knowledge or a local’s perspective – feels like a disingenuous bait-and-switch. It’s the opposite of authenticity, which you need in order to build trust, and trust is what keeps customers and clients coming back to you.
So: yes, but…
Am I using AI? Yes, either where it’s embedded as features in tools I use to make them easier for me, or for creating functional placeholder images and text that are good for drafts and prototypes, but will have to be changed before beta testing.
As a writer, it’s important to cultivate my own voice. AI can’t do that for me. The same goes for the visual art I use in my projects. When it’s time to replace the placeholder AI, I’ll be seeking a contractor to make real art for the games I have in mind.
cascadia teahouse 