Do you talk to people outside the community about AI?

At a going away party this weekend, I was talking to some government workers who mentioned they're mandated to use Copilot at work every day.

Naturally curious I asked, "Oh what do you use it for?"

They both sheepishly admitted that they don't. "We just don't see how it's useful for what we do."

Later that night: birthday dinner at a German restaurant I'd been trying to get to for years. Some old theater colleagues: a props artisan, a lighting designer, they spend their days with hands-on physical work. AI didn't come up once.

Meanwhile I was sitting at the table quietly asking Claude to translate the menu. It didn't just give me definitions — it told me the story behind one of the dishes. Monks during Lent, hiding meat inside pasta to get around fasting restrictions. Made for a very fun conversation topic but nobody noticed I had found out from Claude.

It's very interesting being inside this bubble of thinking about how to make the most of AI all the time and finding that everybody else seems to just not care.

A small win though, my brother got a Claude subscription this weekend. I've been sharing with him what I've been able to do with what I've learned here and it took him a bit to get over the hurdle of paying for a subscription (he's very frugal), but after a day auto-transcribing a jazz improvisation recording straight to sheet music, he's already organizing his context with folders and texting me about projects he wants to build.

How is everyone else finding how people outside the community talk about AI?

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