July 8, 2026 · 2 min read · Jake Kirsch
2 of the Smartest People I Know Completely Disagree on AI
For anonymity, I'll call them Albert and Berta. Although, if they read this, they'll probably know I'm writing about them, and I want them both to know I love and respect their opinions. I'm honestly confused about what their disagreement means for the future.
Albert
Albert is a high level engineer. He gets paid big bucks to take a ton of unstructured data and quickly show it to customers in a structured, flexible format. He works on teams of people with similar skill sets to him. When asked recently what he thought of AI, he said, "It's all a scam."
Albert is personally responsible if data doesn't show up on time or correctly. If he doesn't understand why and how the data is moving and being transformed, customers will stop trusting him and his company. If he's spending money to use AI to produce code that no one can fully wrap their brain around, that's a net negative. Yeah, he could move faster with AI, but at what cost?
Berta
Berta is an executive with AI in her title. She'd say that Albert is stuck in the past. AI can write the code, AI can understand the code, and AI can explain the code and fix bugs. It's not about humans understanding the code, it's about moving an abstraction layer higher.
Berta has produced millions of lines of code that she doesn't fully understand, but it doesn't matter, because she's getting customers, and when bugs arise, AI is solving them.
Honestly, I don't know where I stand. The fact that these two completely disagree makes me realize one thing: if anyone sounds certain right now, stop listening. Albert and Berta are both successfully serving customers in drastically different ways.
Can they both be correct?
Jake Kirsch
Infraless Data