"AI" is like…

In August I spent 30 days (and my own hard-earned money) testing the "premium" AI models offered by Anthropic, namely Claude Opus 4 (and later 4.1). Previously, the invention of LLMs has been compared to that of the printing press, the smartphone, etc. My experience has revealed a much better analogy, at least from a user perspective: The humble Pedalo.

You know "Pedalo?" Not the kind of boat, but the German toy. It was a meme at the start of 2018. It's a simple wooden construction that you stand on and operate through a kind of pedaling motion with your legs, allowing you to roll around. Our Kindergarten and elementary school had these for the kids. The parallels to LLMs are eerie:

• Solid foundation: The eye-catching thing about the Pedalo is the way it takes advantage of a classic of human achievement, the OG—the motherfucking wheel. Name a better invention. I'll wait. Transformer architecture? Exactly.
• Slick design: The Pedalo looks slick: Natural wooden texture and a bright yellow brand identity, all packaged into a small form factor. The Claude website is a similar exercise in minimal design. A sleek chat interface reduced only to the most relevant 17 buttons with 3 different submenus and the brand icon, which looks like a butthole. During text generation it's even animated to look like it's pooping.
• Endless possibilities: You might think the Pedalo only presents an alternative to walking, but there's more. Instead of telling you what exactly, I'm going to cite Sam Altman: "We are excited to see what you do with it."
• Revolution just around the corner: Once they put wings on the Pedalo it's gonna be "game over" for any other mode of transportation. Just like AGI, AI agents, and the Singularity—which are very real things!—will make all our life so much better!
• More fun: If you are tired of walking you can switch to the Pedalo. The enjoyment this novelty provides has been scientifically proven¹ to be non-zero in the first 15 seconds, which is about as much as I can say about chatting with an LLM instead of reading Wikipedia or StackOverflow.
• Faster: Look, just because nobody has won a 100-meter sprint on the Pedalo does not mean it's objectively slower. And actually, when you're standing on it, it feels pretty fast. Just like LLM-assisted coding.
• Style: Using the Pedalo or an LLM you look equally cool.
• Fanatic fanbase: There's no amount of snarky comments nor reasoned debate that will convince a seven-year-old German boy that his Pedalo is shit. AI boosters have similarly developed brains.

Thoughts? Reach out on Mastodon @Optional@dice.camp, message me via SimpleX, or shoot me an email.