Why I'm Starting a Substack
On AI, Tools, and the Art of Thinking for Yourself
I became interested in writing because of my passion for ideas that matter—ideas I think too many people miss. This is a passion project, not a career move. Having worked across different settings and explored a variety of topics, I often encounter issues that I suspect others are thinking about too. My goal is simple: put these thoughts in writing and invite feedback from people who care about the same things.
Today, I want to explore how we as humans interact with the tools that supposedly make our lives better. From the Industrial Revolution to post-war marketing campaigns, we’ve been promised countless innovations that would enhance our existence. Whether these tools actually provide meaningful marginal utility remains debatable, but that’s not my focus here.
I want to write about AI and what it promises us. In many ways, this is just another tool with great potential and some peril—great peril? Honestly, I don’t know. Anyone claiming they know exactly where this is headed is probably just looking for another subscription.
In my day-to-day experience, even before AI, we became accustomed to searching for information—but searching never eliminated the need to think. We could find information more efficiently, but we still had to synthesize it, form our own opinions, draw our own conclusions. That ability to think for ourselves seems increasingly at risk with the advent of agentic systems and their crisp, polished outputs. That’s really what this is about: we’re lazy, and finally there’s a tool that lives up to its promises. Not AGI—I mean the practical ability to edit a document instantly, get summaries formatted seventeen different ways without lifting a finger. It’s seamless, it’s more than enough, and it’s beyond what we could have imagined three years ago.
What seemed impossible now seems inevitable. You can use AI to genuinely improve your life in ways that were once out of reach. But remember: it’s just another tool in your toolbox. It’s not your companion. It’s not your girlfriend, and it’s not you. It’s like your computer, your car, your mailbox key. The difference is its ability to mimic natural language and communicate whatever you want, however you want it. (I have to stop myself here—even I’m anthropomorphizing this tool.)
What I want to explore in my writing are the ways I use these tools—Claude’s chat interface, Cursor, Perplexity—and how they help me accomplish things I couldn’t before. They’re not replacing my thinking or how I live my life. They’re newer, shinier tools I leverage to expand my capabilities. Through this Substack, I’ll share ways you can learn more, build more, read more, write more. I want to show how not just companies, but individuals can improve their lives with these tools.
One last thing: using these tools effectively requires understanding how they function. Not the technical details of logits in a deep learning model, but rather the probabilistic behavior these models were designed to exhibit. Understanding that will make all the difference.
Happy reading!