It is that time of year where the Christmas holidays run out, and we’re all heading back to work (or already there). Part of that for me, is getting back into my regular technical reading and writing. Re-familiarising myself with what it feels like to sit in front of my computer. Working out what my goals will be for the year. All the normal things. What I forgot, is that technical reading is all about LLMs.
Oh Puke
I didn’t like reading a bunch of stuff about LLMs and AI last year while actively working with them. Then I got a nice four week holiday (I’ll go into what 2026 holds in another post) in which I read real paper books, written before the AI hype. I did actual cardboard puzzles which I can’t be sure whether there was AI in the image generation, or just Photoshop. I spent time playing actual board games in my living room, interacting with real people.
So now I open up my feed reader, and I’m looking for something interesting to read, and all the “year in review” stuff is about how many ways LLMs changed and improved in 2025. It might be that I need to re-work my feed so that I can find people actually solving interesting technical problems, but the last really interesting technical blog I read was about database design. So now I don’t just need to ready my brain for doing cool problem solving and writing code. I need to turn back on the “AI filters” and the “prompt engineering”. I don’t get to come back online to meaningful things which require me to engage the part of my brain which has been on holiday, I come back to the fact that programming and people management are a lot less different than they used to be.
I promptly read only the xkcd and closed my feed again. Because it has lost the human touch which I enjoy from long form bloggers in the tech space. After writing this rant I went back to my feed reader and opened up specifically the blogs which I know are by people, for people, about people. That helped a bit.
What Will I Do?
This is the ultimate question for me. I believe that the AI generated “slop” is going to continue it’s negative feedback loop unless very tightly curated within closed systems of learning and knowledge management. I think the pattern matching capabilities have potential, and I am sure I will still use it in my daily work. I just, well, I’m tired of the hype. I don’t want to be prompting my way to success, that doesn’t feel like I actually did something. I think it is why I have been painting and gardening rather than coding in my holidays. I have to actually work for those to be successful.
I can’t afford to ditch tech. Not yet. And not with so many fields untapped. The problem is, I don’t really have the right skill set to direct the creative problem solvers towards issues which might actually bring a brighter future. Maybe there will be AI in that future, but there will also be engineering, and problem solving beyond just “ask the computer to do it”. So I am going into 2026 with an awareness that I may have to shift focus over the course of the next five to ten years. Or less, if the world decides to implode, but it is January, we leave the full scale cynicism until at least March. I am bringing my brain back online, knowing that it isn’t just about thinking “what code am I going to write” or “what systems am I going to build” it is about “what networks and communities am I going to form where I may be able to do more when we all get tired of endless web pages and connectivity hacks”.
A World of Science Fiction
AI should not be making us lazy. Rather it should be reminding us that if we can build one part of the Star Trek universe, we really have no excuse when it comes to trying to build the other parts too. I don’t mean space rockets. Those are good, and lead to all manner of interesting exploration and science, but we haven’t yet solved the issues which are so much closer to home. Even in the science fiction worlds where things go wrong, technology means that people get to eat. If we have the power and energy management to travel across the galaxy, we should have the means to clothe every human.
Technology is still in its infancy, we should not stop dreaming of what could be. Not yet. Not while there is still a chance at building a better future, where humans can come together and support one another. Celebrate our differences. Build communities around similarity without shunning those who dance on the edges of multiple. There is still so much more to understand about the universe, about the world we live in. So much more we could do if we just worked together.
World news isn’t exactly happy reading at the moment. There is still chaos, pain, confusion, and corruption. At home and abroad. We might not change everything all at once. But we can change our own minds.
Dare to Dream
So I guess that’s where I stand. Let’s not forget to dream of a world of science fiction. Let’s not lose sight of what is possible with the tools we have been building. Let’s not forget that money isn’t actually our final goal. Dream of something bigger than money could ever give you, and let that drive how you view 2026. I think that might be the only way we get through.
Pippa Hillebrand 