The Farmer, The Baker, and the Algorithm: How I Actually Found My AI Stance

There's a lot of pressure to have an opinion about AI right now. Everyone has a hot take. Everyone has a strategy. And for a while, I noticed I was starting to form my own opinion from other people's opinions — and that felt wrong.

So I stopped. I did the research. I had real conversations — with farmers, makers, teachers, business owners, friends, and people in my community here in Hood River. I tried the tools, paid attention to my own experience using them, and gave myself permission to not know yet. What came out of that season is what I'm calling my four pillars — a living framework, not a final answer. And I'm sharing it here because I think a lot of you are in the same place I was: feeling the pressure to have a strategy before you've even figured out what you believe.

Start with the stance. The strategy follows.

Pillar One: AI Is a Tool, Not an Authority

I use AI tools every single day — Claude, ChatGPT, Canva, MiniChat, QuickBooks, Google. That's not a secret. But every single time I use them, I come back to one question: Am I still the author of this work?

Is my judgment driving this? Are my values shaping this? Is my voice still in it?

If the answer is yes, I use it freely. It saves me time. It extends what I can do. But the moment I feel myself outsourcing the deciding — the judgment about what's right, what's true, what's worth making — that's when I need to slow down. Because fluent output is not the same as wisdom. A hammer doesn't decide what gets built. The person holding it does. The tool serves you. You don't serve the tool.

Pillar Two: Somatic Intelligence Is Irreplaceable

Somatic means the body — and this is where I believe humans have something AI simply will never have.

Here's what I mean. Royal icing consistency is one of the hardest things to teach in a cookie decorating class. You can measure it with seconds, you can describe the way a peak falls back in — but the truth is, when you've mixed enough icing, you just know the feel. My lead baker Mercedes has been doing the bulk of our icing for two years now, and she's better at it than I am. I've lost a little bit of my touch from not doing it daily. Those are micro-adjustments made without thinking — and they only come from reps.

The same thing happened when I was testing my new summer chocolate chip cookie. I'd been overthinking it for months. I finally just stopped, trusted my gut, pulled from years of baking knowledge, and made the dough. People came back saying they couldn't stop thinking about that cookie. That's not data. That's the result of years of showing up, making things, feeling outcomes, and adjusting.

That knowing — it cannot be uploaded. It cannot be prompted. It can only be lived. And it is your edge. Protect it.

Pillar Three: Vigilance Protects the Work

This one's the hardest. It's about protecting your capacity to do the work without AI — not out of fear, but out of respect for the craft.

I think about it like running. I've worked up to running 10 miles, taken a few weeks off, and come back to find three miles almost breaking me. Skills are muscles. The moment you stop using them, you start losing them. And I want to stay the maker, not just the producer.

I think about my kids — Aatto and Winnie see me in the kitchen, figuring things out, making mistakes, trying again. That process, that struggle, that embodied learning — that's what I want them to inherit. Not a perfectly optimized output. And I think about my students. When someone comes into my kitchen for a class, they're not just learning a technique. They're building a relationship between their brain and their body that will serve them for years.

So here's my challenge to you: do something the hard way this week on purpose. Not because it's more efficient — because you need the reps. The skill lives in the doing.

Pillar Four: Ecological Accountability Is Non-Negotiable

This is where I put my farmer hat on. I live in a valley where water and weather and soil health are not abstract concepts — they are our livelihood and potentially my children's future. When I think about AI data centers and what they actually consume — the water, the energy, the land — and I think about who bears that cost and who captures the benefit, I can't just look away.

I'm not anti-technology. But I do ask: do I need that right now, or can I just do it myself? Progress that destroys the systems life depends on is not actually progress. That's my farmer talking, and I don't apologize for it.

Four pillars. A stance, not a strategy. And I share it not because I think you should adopt it, but because I think you deserve to have your own.

If any of this resonated, I'd love to hear where you land. Send me a DM on Instagram at @daniskitchenshop or leave a comment. And if you haven't listened to the full episode yet — it's a good one. Pull it up on your next walk or baking session. You deserve the conversation. You can find all of our episodes HERE.

-Dani