Hyperfocus Bear Talks About AI and life.

His life mostly.

Everyone likes to talk about AI today. It’s like talking about it adds at least plus twenty points to your intelligence stat, and everyone wants to “max it out.” Many people even take a course or two and they are already certified AI experts. Usually certified by some Big Tech company with an AI product on the shelf.

Those who work hard to create AI for others often don’t bother to explain it, because no one outside will understand it that deeply anyway. Sometimes they explain concepts to each other and they even know what they are talking about and why.

It is not going to be that kind of pitch, though. I want to touch on the “non-techie” point of view. Programmers and people who work with AI on a daily basis perhaps understand it better, but they have no distance from it. Living with your nose inside a chat window or with your agent in your PC is not helping anyone build a healthy relationship.

Some of you might point out that I’m a programmer too, and I use AI. Moreover, I try to write about it.

Yes, it’s true. I have licencia poetica for that, my Dear Critic. Let me point out some unusual facts about me as a programmer.

I started using computers with a ZX logo on them. It was mainly Montezuma’s Revenge, though, I was 10 years old. Then I started to learn soldering and assembling simple electronics circuits. At 13 I was BASIC-ally attached to an Atari 65XE for some time. Then I developed a passion for Pascal on my PC with an Intel 8088 processor and a 20MB hard drive — it was 1991. 
Some of you who used PC back then can even answer this unusual question: what advantage does an old HDD have over an old car downtown in a huge city? An old HDD is definitely easier to park. I guess that was the first trace of AI in the 90's, long before cars started parking themselves.

I was deeply into electronics for years. At sixteen I built custom wireless headphones with an infrared link and an FM-quality PLL decoder loop just to avoid winding inductors. Do any of you even know how that works? 
Then, after reading a book about Magellan’s voyages and Sir Francis Drake’s “good deeds,” I pivoted my career and finished five years of physical geography studies to become a traveler and a pirate, of course, before Pirates of the Caribbean was even filmed.

It didn’t help much with becoming a pirate, but at least 25 years later, sitting in the medieval Vietnamese old town of Hoi An, drinking coffee and eating durian, I knew that Magellan had been here before me, and I knew exactly how fluvial sediments shape river deltas and why he actually sat somewhere else.

Shortly after, I took an Indiana Jones-style photo of myself, complete with a wet towel draped over my head, at the jungle shrines of My Son. If you want to know what real tropical jungle heat is, go to My Son in July.

I have worked in more than half a dozen professions. I worked as a sales clerk. They kicked me out because I tried to help people to buy what they needed, not to sell the garbage electronics what my boss wanted me to push.

I worked in a flour mill. No, I didn’t blow it up. I just left, it was damn hard work.

I was a driver at a facility for disabled kids and youth. It was one of the most rewarding jobs emotionally. Those kids either love you or hate you, they cannot lie about their feeling. I felt loved.

I was an electrician and team leader on big sites for years. They say an electrician only makes a real mistake once. I made two, almost died, still here

I was a seed plant automation expert. I ran 4MW flame burners with enormous flames to dry 60 tons of highly flammable seeds like rapeseed, and I never actually burned anything down, although I saw a couple of others do it. Hot subject, I might say. Oh, and before I ran that massive dryer, I built it from scratch and put it into operation of course.

I managed site logistics on sites where you needed a bus ticket to get around. I was out there pouring concrete on them at nights, mostly just to make things easier for the bus.

I speak five languages, and some of them even fluently. None to perfection, just classic “Pareto-good”.

I ate breakfast alongside Kurdish militants with grenade launchers at the table in Ceylanpinar Turkey 2012 — just 500 meters from the Syrian border, while shots echoed in the distance.

But I also met many Arab kids there, and despite all the war around them, they were still smiling.

I’ve been lucky enough to try some food around the world.

I tried this what lives in the water

I tried those which can fly (not any more)

I tried those who tried to escape

I ate the weirdest breakfast on Romanian 7000 hectares farm.

I’ve run into American tractors all over the world.

I drove my car through the Moroccan desert alone at night to Marrakesh. But I didn’t just drive through; I sat down to share a meal and was welcomed like a family member in a local village where my colleague lived.

I watched my friend’s brother take part in a traditional Moroccan Fantasia 80 kilometers outside of Marrakesh, somewhere deep in the desert. Charging horses, blinding dust, and the deafening roar of synchronized musket fire.

Then, under the bare bulbs of the Marrakesh medina, I sat down with friends and ate a sheep’s head.

I made a couple photos around the globe, perhaps some of them even not bad

I lived two years in Russian Stavropol and almost stayed there — because of the money and the architecture of course. Not for any other reason.

Now please go to your software department and ask around. If you find a programmer like that, just let me know.

But let’s get back to the AI discussion. I promise I didn’t bring any grenade launchers back from Turkey to blow this miracle away.

Today anyone who wants to shine talks about AI. 
AI this, AI that. Agents here, agents there. 
Entire agent armies (no heavy arms involved, though)

It’s such a fascinating topic.

Will it kill us or empower us?

Will it make us poor, or will it create a guaranteed-income society? Both, perhaps?

Which “us” will benefit most from this revolution? 
Big Tech? 
Governments? 
Ordinary people?

Unfortunately, “AI” is a container word. 
It can be a badge you stick on a product with a weak NPU inside just to sell it at a higher price. 
It can be a product for the masses, designed to make them dependent on yet another subscription — without which life is supposedly so much harder today. 
A long time ago, young people stopped using libraries; now, some of them have stopped using their brains altogether.

We are starting to accept this situation, even when we understand that AI is usually just “Pareto good” at everything. Competent across the board, rarely exceptional at anything. Organizations have started replacing people with AI in ways no one would have dreamed of three years ago.

Of course, it’s done in people’s best interest. Nobody said it had to be the same people.

I have my own concept for explaining LLMs to non-techies. I usually say: AI is a concave stochastic mirror covered with smoke.

You “look inside” it with your magic prompt, and you receive a picture painted by a half-blind mental giant. If you are not an “AI magic” practitioner, you might sometimes think this giant is an idiot. And honestly, if you are not a real magician, you can’t tell the difference between the giant and yourself.

I do not intend to insult anyone who uses AI and LLMs in particular without knowing enough about their limitations. 
“Knowing enough” here does not mean simply knowing that AI is imperfect. We are all imperfect by definition. Why would we expect AI trained on our imperfect knowledge, by imperfect brains, to be perfect?

Did I overlook something here? Perhaps stochastic mechanics and some probability rules. Nothing particularly easy to understand.

What’s in it for you?

Embrace this new tool wisely. Don’t reject it — there’s no way; you can’t stop a tsunami. 
But even if you are good at surfing digital waves, ask yourself: where will that tsunami take you?

I’m afraid you will not like the spot.

The only hope is within us. We are the creators; AI is just a tool.

See my creation of CutieB here: /blog/the-cutieb-is-born

Originally published on Medium, 8 June 2026.