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If you swap the word 'AI' for 'software' whenever you read about it, the topic becomes less scary and more understandable, because AI is just software — sometimes very good software — and should be treated accordingly.
Pierce's mental trick for de-hyping AI: mentally replace 'AI' with 'software' to strip away the mystique and treat it like any other tool. ✦ AI generated
David Pierce · Platformer · 2026-07-14 · original ↗
A thing I tell people a lot is: if you read a thing about AI and you just find-and-replace the word "AI" with the word "software," everything gets a little more understandable and a lot less scary, and I think we should all maybe do it that way. It's just software, and that's OK.
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- ·Read AI content, swap word 'AI' with 'software'
- ·Makes topic more understandable, less scary
- ·AI is just software—sometimes very good software
- ·Strips away mystique and hype from AI framing
- ·Treats AI as an ordinary tool, not something alien
- ·Pierce's suggestion: 'it's just software, and that's OK'
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