I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline
Simon Willison's Weblog3d agoEthicsSimon Willison highlights Chad Whitacre’s decision to leave tech and Open Source, framed not as a forum threat but as concrete action. Whitacre describes wanting to become “AI Amish” or “Internet Amish,” moving toward an offline, analog life closer to 1980 than 1780. A previous post about using Claude Code with Opus 4.5 shows how agentic AI felt intoxicating and unsettling enough to push him away from technological accelerationism.
Quoting Daniel Jalkut
Simon Willison's Weblog3d agoOpinionSimon Willison quotes Daniel Jalkut’s short comment on the polarized AI debate. Jalkut argues that people against AI are often too against it, while people for AI are often too for it. The post is not a technical update, but a concise opinion pointing to the need for more balanced, less tribal evaluation of AI’s benefits and harms.