Claude Code at the Four Corners

I brought Claude to Four Corners. It was mid-query, running in the back of the truck off the same beacon that got me around the country five years ago, while Krista and I didn’t realize that the map taking us to Durango brought us right through the Four Corners. Thinking of five years ago and the emphasis of Can I Park Here?, it felt like a comic reality to see how far forward and backward I have come since that day. I coped with the excuse of leaving Stanford the day prior, packing up to return my keys to student housing before racing to the wedding of two of my best friends from UC Davis.

Eight to twenty hours door-to-door by plane to this part of Colorado (depending on delays which I have learned the hard way in the past), or fifteen hours guaranteed by road, was my logic. But the truth is, for all the years spent flying, I really love exploring the roads.

Anyway, I switched the Wi-Fi to my cell hotspot to ensure I didn’t lose any progress as we took the pit stop. It is amazing when you aren’t towing how much less you pre-plan routes and how much more Google takes over. To think I could have driven right past a bucket-list item.

We arrived and yes, I stood in the corner before I snapped the picture of Claude.

The spot was quiet, with a few Native vendors selling handmade crafts they pride themselves on. They aren’t automating away the arrowheads their ancestors created as a means to hunt and protect. Despite the margins, maybe some of them are, but it seems like a hard thing to fake. At least harder than these words have become.

Claude is riding shotgun in more than one way. In my time at Stanford, it brought me closer to code, and the engineers on my team closer to the customers. I felt a deep sense of irony when I heard people read statements in a familiar GPT-assisted format of, “It’s not this, it’s that.” It was more eye-opening than ever as I took cognitive tests at the med school while building our app, or when we had a slide from a very credible source I will not name: “If I only have 2-5 years to meaningfully contribute to the earth, what should I do?”

Drive more? Experience More? Pay More Attention?

I love road-tripping, and I love building. Perhaps for the first time, both are possible. Instead of arguing about the Turing test, AGI, and who gets there first, perhaps we spend some time arguing about human dependency on AI and when that is acceptable.

I wouldn’t have built this website without it…