Weeknote #28 [W26.18] - Weekly AI rant & curation for CND

Published on Apr 23, 2026 • 5 min read

Weekly AI rant

At work, we planned a product roadmap for FY26-27. I have zero faith in what we have planned.

To begin with, the whole idea of making a product roadmap for an entire year seems misguided to me. We are barely able to stick to weekly sprint plans because sales always comes above product in the list of priorities. What hope does a yearly plan have?

But quarterly and yearly plans are the way corporate logic works, so what else can I do but play along?

A much bigger concern I have is “AI”.

A lot of the product roadmap is built on the foundation of the AI hype train. Which I have many concerns about:

  1. Everybody is overestimating the actual amount of work we will be able to put into production because “Claude Code will do it in a day.”
  2. We have planned a lot of AI features. Some of these are for critical workflows which require more accuracy than LLMs can guarantee.
  3. We do not have control over the models we use. OpenAI/Anthropic can decide any day to alter the way their models work (as they have done this week, and will do again). Which may (or may not) alter the way our product behaves. The point is that it is a variable completely out of our control, and I am failing to see wisdom in so optimistically relying on these models.
  4. Our users most probably do NOT want AI in many of the use cases that we’ve planned. Which includes customer support. AI bots for customer support are almost universally hated. Put them in a situation where people are already stressed (while making an insurance claim, for instance), and things will only get worse.

CND curation for May

The films for May to be to screened at Cinema Next Door has been finalized.

We’re doing films on cities. Films in which the urban environment features prominently. The point is to explore the idea that the built environment affects the people who inhabit that space. In ways that are sometimes obvious, and sometimes not.

We’ve gone for a lot of geographical variety, which makes sense, considering it is a curation on cities.

Here’s the list of films we are going with:

It is a joy to be able to screen indie films

I’m most excited about Kayo Kayo Colour?, which is an independent film from Ahmedabad. I had watched it at IFFK 2024, and I think it will provide a lot to discuss after the screening. I definitely know one question I want to ask everyone related to the film.

We had been reachin gout to indie film makers in India since we started back in December.

But we had no luck until Wafa from La Paata Films replied and gave us permission to screen Kayo Kayou Colour?

We are also planning to print out some merch (posters & postcards) and make those vailable at the venue for purchase. The revenue from that will also go to the studio. We’ve never tried this before, so I’m not sure how it will go.

But I’m happy that we get to support a independent film, and I hope we can do more of this in the future.

A few films which didn’t make the list

Here’s also a list of additional film which I really like, but didn’t make the list:

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