Rejecting Jakob Nielsen’s AI train to the future. Toot toot!

Oh Jakob Nielsen! Oh one-time champion of the human within human-centred interaction! It’s the 9th of Feb 2026 and your latest UX newsletter has thudded into my inbox.

Now I say “UX newsletter”. but it’s really a one-time joy turned eyebrow-raising horror, regularly heralding the coming wonders of AI.

Am I on the wrong side of history? Can I gird my loins and get on board your techno-optimist AI train? Or will I stay fretfully behind on the platform, clutching at the human-first principles of your book Don’t Make Me Think. (Fun fact, Jakob, we have 6 copies in our office!).

Because it’s you, Jakob, I’ll try to get on board ❤️ And I have to say, your latest newsletter makes the ride appealing. What’s this you’ve included? A comic! That’ll help, stamp my ticket! 

Safely ensconced in your exciting techno-future carriage, I settle in to read.

Let’s begin, like all good comics, with a rousing cover!

It’s a podcast episode retold as a comic! And here’s a city-stomping, genAI'd Marc Andreasson, ready to walk us through his argument (and by extension yours, Jakob) that AI will transform education and deliver super-powers to us all.

So much gold! So much future! See how this famed venture capitalist is crushing the grey and boring present!

Gosh though, Jakob. In my excitement I skimmed ahead to look at the rest of the comic and I’ve got to ask: how did you genAI a consistent looking Marc through so many panels? 

👨🏻‍🦳 “I made all the illustrations in this article with Nano Banana Pro and had to generate many more variations than I’m showing here to get a decent level of character consistency, even though the strip only features a single character.”

Oh thanks. Haha yes I can imagine it must have been fiddly; all those prompt do-overs you had to go through to keep Marc consistently Marc. Thank you for working so hard on this creative activity.

And whilst we’re at it, was it this kind of activity that led to your proud claim (newsletter 29 Dec) that you’d generated 20,000 images across 2025?

(Seriously?! You proudly say twenty fucking thousand? Maybe you should speak to the Chile community who are losing swathes of water every single prompt. No no, let’s not leap out of the carriage so soon. Back to the comic!) 

With the cover behind us, we’re getting under way. Now here’s a normal-sized Marc, creeping up on Isaac Newton to let him know that - surprise! - we’ve finally achieved alchemy; creating ‘gold’ out of everyday matter:

That’s right, we’ve done it Isaac, making value from nothing! Turning sand into silicon into (AI) thought!

Wow. Wow! I mean, we already had people turning matter into thought. But I suppose this process does it anew by… removing people from the equation? Is that it?

Okay let’s not get hung up on this because our train’s only just left the station and there’s still so much to cover. Moving on!

So we’ve turned sand into thought in the form of AI. Now let’s talk about the potential of AI to transform education. Because, as Jakob says, this is:

👨🏻‍🦳 “one of AI’s most profound social contributions”

Let’s take a look!

Here’s Marc again to help us understand. Chilling in his son’s bedroom, he observes that the best education - namely, one-to-one education - was previously only accessible to the world’s most privileged. Like the young Alexander the Great. But now thanks to AI, children in bedrooms around the world can be super-empowered, just like the all-conquering Alexander… 

Gerrp, Jakob I’m suddenly a little travel sick. Alexander the Great? He’s a bit of a macho fanboy measure of ability, isn’t he? Were there no other examples of super-achieving folk we could use? Isaac Newton maybe?

No wait, nerdy Isaac has already been mocked a few frames earlier because of his failed attempts at alchemy. Haha! Isaac Newtown. What a doofus. Never mind, I’m still on the train, Jakob! We’re all going to be GREAT. Our kids are all going to be top achievers! Everyone's going to be in that 98th percentile!

(Although I’m not sure who’s going to be left in the other percentiles if everyone’s crushing it up here in the top bracket. I mean that’s confusing but…)

Toot toot!

And pay no heed to all those pesky studies showing that AI atrophies people’s capacity for critical thinking. They were probably written by doofuses like Isaac. Because we know in our gut that AI makes high attainment possible for everyone*.

*Who is a) is an English speaker (genAI being sooo well trained on non-English data [/sarcasm]); b) has access to AI tools, and c) has a disposable income with £20/month to spare for a ChatGPT license. 

Moving on!! 

Ah, our AI train is truly underway now, chugging into the pleasant land of the future. Out of the window I see productive towns and cities, full of high performing schools and offices. How can they be so productive, I ask? Well, because they’re rich with AI, which rewards citizens who are “participants” and who have “agency”.

Agency? That’s a funny word isn’t it, Jakob, care to explain?

👨🏻‍🦳 “The term describes initiative, the willingness to just do things, being a “live player” who participates in events rather than passively observing.”

“AI should be the ultimate lever for a kid with agency to say ‘I can change things’” 

YES! 

Hang on [checks notes], so we’re not that bothered about democratising education for everyone? Now we’re only benefitting those kids with “agency”? Okay, got it. Scratch that. This is a do-ocracy, after all. We want “participants” rather than “passive observers”. Participants like you and me, I guess Marc? Agency! 

And side note: thank you Jakob for helping me finally focus on real work. By which I mean “building”. Thanks to this newsletter I now have the vocab to dismiss the less sexy, non-important, non-real work. The pointless invisible work - the caring, the maintaining, the fixing. And of course all the dull non-visible work - building systems, social care, processes, legal frameworks, social structures, rights, healthcare. That’s the “passive” stuff that I guess “observers” are doing. BORING!

Let’s get building!

Especially “building” the kids. Because like Marc says, “The goal is to make them spectacularly great. To build the super-empowered individual.”  Which is definitely not dystopian sounding at all!

And we’ve got to get on this quick, right? Because what’s that I see in the distance? Dark clouds ahead!

Empty playgrounds, check.

Shuttered buildings, check.

Down-trending charts (scream!), check.

That’s right, we’d be in a land of trouble without AI!

Although Jakob I’m not quite clear why the economy getting smaller - in an age where growth is literally eating the planet - means we are “self-euthanising”. But never mind, because you and Marc are here to reassure me that we need AI and robots to help our reduced population... maintain consumption at our current levels? Which I guess is good?

Toot toot! No time to answer, because here’s Marc again, pointing at all the big things:

Damn straight Marc, where are the new cities?! We’ve wasted the last 100 years building the invisible! Rights. Social care. Economic security. Wellbeing. We need more big things, monuments and statues to point to!

God damn Jakob. I like all this big, muscular imagery in your newsletter. Dams. Infrastructure. Warriors on horseback. If only everything could be muscular. Like reading. BUT WAIT, IT CAN!

👨🏻‍🦳 “Marc describes his media consumption as a “perfect barbell strategy”: he reads X/Twitter for up-to-the-minute developments and old books (50+ years old) that have stood the test of time, while remaining deeply skeptical of everything in between.”

The dumbbell approach. Hey, we made reading tough! Muscular reading. Yes I’m still kicking sand in your face, Newton. Haha what a dweeb. 

Damnit, Jakob. I definitely brought the right reading for this train ride (your newsletter ✊). And I’m definitely doing what Marc does from now on: reading old books, because they’re So Right. Plus of course I’ll start getting the freshest takes from X. Genius!

Although… maybe ideas in old books are so relevant because of natural filtering? I mean, aren’t there so many ‘good’ old books because the crap and irrelevant ones fell out of print? No?

Wait, I’m sorry Jakob, I didn’t mean to question Marc’s genius. I’ll forget my doubts whilst perusing the on-train library (I bought a first class ticket, after all). Plus I'll open the X app, push my face into the content firehose and somehow filter out the useful from its 6,000 tweets per second.

No time to figure out how! Just as long as I keep my lunch down and bask in the “tremendous amount of alpha” (a term that’s definitely not eewww) as it's smashing into my eyes! Instead focus on everything I’m benefitting from. Like direct access to experts!

Here's our cheerleader again:

👨🏻‍🦳 “Marc prizes direct access to domain practitioners: founders, researchers, experts who actually do the work”

Yes! So muscular! So alpha! People! Direct access! Like, one-on-one style! It’s like my very own, one-to-one education!

But wait up Jakob… didn’t we say earlier that one-to-one, direct access to thinkers was for the super-privileged elite? I thought we were accessing education through the lens of genAI? That it was doing the thinking for us?

And I thought that this was the route to super-powers? 

The train wheels are rattling for me here, Jakob. I’m confused, so maybe help me out! Are we aiming for AI-education, or direct access like Alexander’s access to Aristotle? Do the masses get the AI-filtered stuff, whilst the direct access goes to those who can afford it?

The train cabin is shaking and which one is it??

And whilst I’m at it, does it have to be Alexander the Great? I mean really? Why is it always Alexander the Great in these kind of arguments? Rather than another conqueror like… I don’t know…  Genghis Khan?

Woah. Our train is lurching now. And right alongside a precipice too, whence from down below come whispers of empire and colonialism.

Hey, this isn’t what I signed up for Jakob! I just wanted to buy an exciting ticket to the future! One where I can sit in the kind of carriage class where I don’t have to be bothered by uncomfortable questions. I don’t want to consider what it means to be conquered and colonised. Really, I just want to sit in peace with fellow travellers like me.

Woah, woah. I am not saying they need to look like me. They just need to be the … kind of people who don’t bring politics into everything. You get me? I bought a ticket to build the future. I didn’t buy one to have the future done to me.

But phew, luckily the huge awks of this moment are brought to an end… by the end of the comic!

Build, build, build. 🎉🔧🎉 And on the subject of building, here comes Jakob again to helpfully "build" us a summary of what we've been reading. A kind of formal, stilted… like a soulless genAI summary.

Suddenly cold sweat washes over me as we sweep into a tunnel. Despite all the talk of building, of super-powers and growth, here I am, sitting on the AI train to the future, reading an AI summary of a genAI’d comic of an AI-advocate’s podcast.

Desperately scrolling up to the start again to find something human in Jakob's once-human UX newsletter, I see he gave a handy intro. But now I see that this, too, is just another bitesized slab of bland verbiage in a meta-AI slop fest.

Were you ever present in this at all, Jakob?

🤖 Summary: We possess the philosopher’s stone in the form of AI (transmuting cheap sand into expensive thought), tutoring that used to be limited to emperors (also AI), and tools that transcend biological limits (AI again). The only thing holding us back is our willingness to act, because humans still need agency. AI works. The question is: will you?

I can’t ride this train any longer but I’m trapped, hurtling through the darkness to the future.

Toot toot!