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Last year, my company had an AI hackathon, and I built my very first tool! It was something deeply not practical, but very fun.

Like, truly. It was haphazard and clunky and very much held together by enthusiasm. If you’re wondering - it was an automated PR firm for my company’s news. But I still remember the feeling of seeing something in my brain, typing a bunch of things, and then a few hours later being able to click on it…..and then for only part of it to work.

That felt epiiiiic.

I think that was the moment AI stopped feeling like a headline to me and started feeling alive. Since then, I’ve been sometimes awkwardly, sometimes obsessively, stepping further into the AI-building world.

And my company is pretty relaxed about all of this. No one is standing over my shoulder demanding I become an autonomous agent by Q4. But even in a relaxed environment, you can feel the change. There are plenty of moments now where the subtext is, “You could probably use AI for this.”

And honestly, sometimes you can and for many of us in our careers now, it’s encouraged, not seen cutting corners.

We also look at who is using which AI tools the most. Not in some terrifying dystopian way, but enough that I can confirm: yes, this is becoming a real thing. AI usage has started to carry a little status with it.

Which is why I felt very seen, and also a little unsettled, when I read this WIRED piece about Meta backing off “tokenmaxxing,” where employees apparently felt pressure to prove how much they were using AI. Not necessarily how well they were using it. Just that they were.

Love when the future of work becomes a leaderboard no one emotionally signed up for (hopefully my sarcasm is translating through these keys).

And I get why this happens, because every era has some kind of cool club card. Maybe you went to the right university. Maybe you worked in banking or consulting. Maybe you had the right agency job in LA and got invited to certain parties because your email signature explained your status.

There has always been some way to signal that you know the room.

Now, in some rooms, the signal is AI fluency. Do you use the tools? Do you know the names? Do you have a SWARM? Are you automated? Are you building? Are you “AI-native”?

And listen. I love AI. I think it is genuinely cool. I think it can collapse the distance between an idea and a first version in a way that still feels a little bit like magic to me. I do not want to pretend I am above the thrill of making a weird little thing on my laptop. I am not. I love the weird little thing.

But I also think we are starting to talk about the wrong part.

Because some people are using AI because it genuinely helps them think, build, research, write, test, summarize, move faster, or get unstuck. And some people are using AI because they want to look like the kind of person who uses AI.

Those are not the same thing.

On the other side, I recently saw a photographer say she would never use AI because she handpicks and edits every photo herself. And I get the instinct. There is something beautiful about craft. There is something meaningful about doing the work with your own hands and eyes.

But I don’t think refusing AI automatically makes the work better. And I don’t think using AI automatically makes the work worse.

The shoe still has to shoe.

A handmade leather shoe can be beautiful. A machine-assisted shoe can be useful. But at the end of the day, it still has to fit. It still has to last. It still has to do the thing it was made to do.

The output still matters.

The point of using AI is not to look like a person who uses AI. The point is to make the work better, faster, clearer, or more possible than it was before.

And if we have reached the point where people are faking or forcing their AI usage just to seem relevant, I think we may have lost the plot.

Because I don’t actually care if someone used AI. I care if they knew when to stop. I care if they could tell the difference between “this saved me time” and “this made something weird and hollow, but I’m pretending it didn’t.” I care if the tool served the work, or if the work became an excuse to perform the tool.

I still get nervous talking about AI. There are other people who understand the technical layers better. People who can explain agents and infrastructure and model behavior without immediately wanting to lie down.

But this week I posted a video that has nothing to do with AI. It is probably my best-performing video so far. And all I did was look at something, notice a pattern, and talk about it.

No agent. No automation. No stack.

Just an observation.

Which felt like a useful reminder, honestly. The tool is not the taste. The tool is not the point of view. The tool is not the reason people care.

AI can help you do more work in less time. So can hiring someone. So can having money. So can building a better process, having a calmer nervous system, or finally making a calendar that does not actively try to ruin your life.

There are lots of ways to become more productive. But productivity is not the same as meaning. And using AI is not the same as knowing what to do with it.

So yes, learn the tools. Play with the agents. Build the weird little thing. Let yourself be delighted when an idea in your head becomes something you can actually click on.

But don’t confuse the signal with the substance.

The question is not, “Did you use AI?”

The better question is: did it help?

Even more importantly: did you still know what you were trying to say?