What a Year of Living With AI Taught Me

A year ago, I shared some reflections on how I was using AI and suggested that it’s helpful to think of these tools as competent interns working remotely: earnest and sophisticated, but still in need of direction and supervision. In 2025, those interns grew up. What surprised me wasn’t the pace of technical progress but how quickly AI stopped feeling novel and became ordinary.

I didn’t realize how deep the integration went until OpenAI’s year-in-review revealed I had logged over 3,500 chats, placing me in the top 0.1 percent of users , apparently edging out Sam Altman. Via ChatGPT My “tech stack” includes ChatGPT , Gemini , Claude , Manus , Perplexity , Google’s AI Studio, NotebookLM , ElevenLabs , MidJourney , Elicit , and Claude Code. With this context, I felt it might be useful to share