The Discourse Is Emotional Because Emotional Is Easier
The 5-year-old analogy is everywhere. The actual workflow is nowhere.
Everyone keeps telling you AI is a toddler playing dress-up as a professional. Compelling image. One like. Moving on.
Here's what nobody is posting about: what happens when you actually use it for something specific.
I spent a day testing AI in Figma. Here's the boring, unsexy truth: if you put the work into the prompt before you touch the tool — one request. One. And you walk away with something usable.
I don't pay for Figma edit access. Didn't need to. What I got were prototype screenshots — cheap, fast, concrete enough to open a real conversation with a developer. No blank canvas. No "let's start from scratch" energy. Just a stack of rough visuals to draw on top of, argue with, improve.
The AI didn't replace the design thinking. It skipped the part where I stare at an empty artboard for two hours before I even have an idea worth ruining.
Now notice something.
Every anti-AI post you've read today was built around a vivid image designed to make you feel something. The toddler. The stochastic parrot. The plagiarism machine. Compelling aesthetics. Zero methodology.
Meanwhile some of us are quietly iterating on prototype screenshots before the morning coffee gets cold.
The anti-AI discourse is emotional because emotional is easier than empirical. And "easier than empirical" is, ironically, exactly what they're accusing the AI of being.
