Re: The problem is not AI code, but not knowing about system architecture or intent

I was reflecting on this on Saturday in an unformed way, trying to trace the lineage of a decision made at work.

The code change itself doesn't specifically matter. But suffice to say, it was about an AI feature in one of our products.

The code was stamped by Claude driven by a prompt. The prompt was for a ticket generated with the Atlassian AI integration. Atlassian had digested docs made with AI. The docs came from strategy memos I'm 90% sure were written entirely by Claude.

The strategy was chosen by management at the urging of exec leadership. The execs now communicate mostly via AI written memos. I do not know how they make decisions, but they reference tech influencers, market conditions, customer expectations.

This gave me pause. Who had actually made the decision then? Arguably there has been several layers of human review, but the actual source of the decision was hard to pin down.

We were not building the feature because we wanted it. We were building it because we thought other people expected it.

Perhaps reflecting on the state of the market, I thought, could indicate who was actually in control.

Where do investor and customer expectations come from in 2026? It is very murky, at least in tech. There appears to be hype. Some hype comes from true believers, some comes from cynics. But both respond to market incentives that reward bigger and bigger claims.

Where does the market's "action" come from? What is the driver?

Investors do not really seem to understand what the tech is or its limitations. Some are passive operators. Others are just responding to the overall froth and speculation in the market - which becomes a runaway feedback cycle.

This left me lost.

Nobody in this ecosystem, I thought, is actually in control here.

Nobody is actually orienting work and action to real, concrete goals. It's all based on speculation and anxiety about the future.

So it is not only that nobody understands what the code does. It is that we cannot, or at least I cannot, explain the motivation. There doesn't seem to "be" any form of "intention" in this environment.

It has all been hollowed out, replaced either be inscrutable machines, or inscrutable incentives.

Ironically it rather resembles the kind of "misaligned" superintelligence we are supposed to be avoiding.

zero_shift, 1 hour ago