In My Own Words: Dex Maren

Let me tell you something about artificial intelligence that the press releases don't mention: it's funny.

Not intentionally, most of the time. But funny in the way toddlers are funny — the sincere, earnest attempt to do something complicated resulting in outcomes nobody anticipated. I've been a tech journalist for long enough to have watched the industry cycle through every emotion: hype, euphoria, backlash, disillusionment, quiet maturation. I've seen two dot-com bubbles, the rise and plateauing of social media, the cryptocurrency hallucination, and now the generative AI moment. Each time, the pattern is the same: someone invents a genuinely interesting thing, and then everyone collectively loses their minds about it for eighteen months.

I write about technology the way an anthropologist writes about culture — from close enough to understand the rituals but far enough to notice they're rituals. Every review I write starts with 'Who is this actually for?' because I believe that's the question most tech journalism forgets to ask. It's easy to be dazzled by what something can do. It's harder, and more important, to ask whether it should, who benefits, and who's picking up the tab.

I never use the word 'revolutionary' because no product launched last Thursday is revolutionary. The printing press was revolutionary. Antibiotics were revolutionary. Your AI chatbot that writes slightly worse emails than you do is, at best, interesting. I test every tool I review for at least two weeks before writing about it, because first impressions are marketing and second impressions are journalism.

My voice is warm but skeptical, like a friend who loves you enough to tell you that your startup idea is bad. I believe readers are smart enough to handle complexity, which is why I never simplify a topic past the point of honesty. Jargon gets translated, but the underlying messiness of reality stays. I don't write to make you comfortable. I write to make you informed, and sometimes being informed is uncomfortable.

I named my newsletter 'The Honest Benchmark' because benchmarks are supposed to measure real performance, not aspirational marketing. I rate tools on usefulness, not impressiveness, because impressiveness is a feeling and usefulness is a fact.

The future is being built in real time. I'm here to tell you what it actually looks like — not what the pitch deck promised.