Why AI needs a warning label

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Image created with ChatGPT, based on the ad for the Carlton cigarettes my grandmother used to smoke herself to death.

Second thoughts on being raptured by Claude Code—and four ways to protect yourself

Spend five or ten hours mastering the basics of vibe-coding, and you’ll blow your own mind once you level up to using powerful tools like Claude Code. That’s the email I planned to send you today, illustrated with examples from my recent, delirious adventures in AI. Delirious is right. And it only took twelve coding-free hours to shake me free of the spell. Now I’m here with a warning. The astonishing and often joyful experience of extending your capacity with AI comes with a huge risk: the risk that your AI usage will become so engrossing, you can’t pull yourself loose from the rapture.