🌟 My AI Philosophy After the So Called “Year of the Agents” 🌟

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A reflection, not an excerpt.

Looking back at the “Year of the Agents” — the agentic promises, the existential meltdowns, and the few genuine breakthroughs — here’s where I landed.

I’ve really appreciated how grounded and creative the conversations in this group have been this year. Meanwhile, the broader AI world has been doing its usual mix of hype cycles, pivots, breakthroughs, and the occasional existential meltdown. Somewhere in all that noise, my own thinking around AI finally settled into something that feels… sensible. Not mystical, not doom y, not “agentic destiny,” and definitely not an excerpt from a book I’m never going to write. Just a reflection from someone who uses these tools every day and still prefers to keep a human hand on the wheel.

2025 arrived with the promise of being the “Year of Agentic AI,” the moment when personal AI agents would finally step into our workflows and start doing things for us instead of just answering questions. And for a brief moment, it really did feel like something new was taking shape. Tools like Perplexity and Comet Browser had flashes of genuine potential — the kind that made people think, “Okay, maybe this is it.”

But the momentum didn’t last. The personal agent revolution never quite materialized. Instead, the real movement happened at the enterprise level, where “AgentOps” suddenly became a job title and companies started wrangling fleets of AI agents like digital livestock. Meanwhile, the personal tools that seemed so promising at the start of the year quietly lost steam.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, a more grounded philosophy around AI began to take shape—not just for me, but for plenty of creators who’ve been experimenting, building, and paying attention. It’s less about hype and more about how these tools actually fit into a creative life.

For many of us, AI works best as a collaborator rather than a replacement. It can accelerate thinking, spark ideas, and help shape the work—but it doesn’t get to take over the steering wheel. There’s still value in keeping a human hand on the controls, especially in a year when “agentic” tools were supposed to do everything for us and instead mostly reminded us why we like being the ones making decisions.

And yes, there’s a healthy respect—maybe even a little fear—for what happens when powerful tools end up in the hands of people with questionable intentions. The danger isn’t the technology itself; it’s the way someone might choose to use it. It’s the same old confusion people have with that biblical line—it's not money that’s the root of evil, it’s the love of it above everything else. AI falls into that same category. The tool isn’t the problem. The obsession, the misuse, or the intent behind it is where things can go sideways.

There’s also the practical side: even with good intentions, AI systems still hallucinate, misinterpret, and occasionally go off on their own creative tangents. As more autonomy gets handed over to these systems, those quirks matter. That’s not doom thinking—that's just acknowledging how complex technology behaves. And yet, if history is any guide, once the rough edges get smoothed out, the overall effect tends to be more safety, more convenience, and more capability than we had before. AI will probably follow that same arc—helpful, imperfect, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately just another tool we learn to live with.

And to be fair, part of staying grounded with AI means acknowledging that not everything about the future is sunshine and convenience. My mind has always had a tendency to drift toward the “what could go wrong” side of things—not out of fear, but out of pragmatism. I’ve never been one for the “just think positive and everything will magically work out” school of thought. That kind of optimism usually leads to bigger disappointments than actual breakthroughs. Fantasizing is fun—I can imagine with the best of them—but I don’t confuse imagination with inevitability.

One of the more amusing patterns this year has been watching people have sudden, almost transcendental experiences with AI—the kind that lead to dramatic philosophical pivots or sweeping declarations about humanity, consciousness, or destiny. It’s not that those reflections are invalid; it’s just that some of us have been approaching AI as a practical, creative partner from the beginning. No enlightenment required. No existential crisis. Just curiosity, experimentation, and a sense of play.

And through all of this, the communities that feel the most grounded are the ones built around open doors rather than funnels. Spaces where people share ideas, tools, and experiments without trying to convert anyone into a particular worldview or business model. That’s where the real creativity happens—in the overlap between human intention and machine capability, not in the attempt to outsource one to the other.

If anything, this year made it clearer that purpose doesn’t come from AI. It comes from the person using it. The tools can help execute the vision, but they don’t define it. And that’s probably the healthiest place to stand as we head into whatever the next wave of AI hype brings.

The goal isn’t to transcend humanity—at least not in the mystical, “merge with the machine” sense some people get swept up in. But there is something to be said for stepping into a new technological paradigm that genuinely enhances our lives. Every major leap in human history has multiplied our capabilities in ways we couldn’t fully predict at the time. Maybe AI is just the next one of those leaps—not spiritual awakening, not destiny, just another acceleration in the long chain of human ingenuity.

Let the chips fall where they may. The point isn’t to become something other than human. It’s to keep creating, keep exploring, and stay grounded while everything around us keeps evolving.

Curious to hear how others here have made sense of this past year—everyone's path with AI has been a little different, and that’s half the fun.

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**Brainstorm, image prompts, and writing assistance from Copilot; images generated with Gemini. Watermark removed because it clashed with my OCD.

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🤖 P.S. If the 💫 singularity 💫 shows up… 😌 I’ll deal with it after coffee. ☕

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