A Small AI Mistake
For those who do not know, I love reading and writing, and sometimes even philosophizing. Maybe that is because, as a software engineer, I am in a fairly privileged position compared to other members of society. And maybe that privilege gives me a little more time and space to think about things than I otherwise would have.
So I decided to write a blog on the topic of growing out your hair in Serbia, which is truly a very unpleasant experience that I would not recommend to anyone. Like all modern people who keep efficiency mounted on the wall like an icon, I use AI to help me write.
Of course, after three years of working directly with AI, I still have not learned how to give it proper instructions.
What I actually wanted was some help with structure. I had the topic in my head, and I wanted the AI to help me organize it: maybe suggest sections, angles, and a possible flow. Instead, because my prompt was not clear enough, it understood the request as: write the whole blog for me.
So it did.
It did not give me a simple outline. It wrote the entire thing. Full intro, sections, arguments, conclusion, everything.
At first, this was just funny.
It was a normal AI misunderstanding. I asked for one thing, it produced another thing, and I was ready to treat it like a small accident in the writing process.
But then I actually read what it wrote.
What Surprised Me
What it produced honestly surprised me. The text was very close to the blog I wanted to write. It even divided the topic into the same kinds of sections I had in mind: barbers, family, friends, society, awkward comments, and the general discomfort of doing something slightly different.
That is the part I could not stop thinking about. How did the model so easily assume that growing your hair out in Serbia would be a socially uncomfortable experience?
Not because AI is some magical judge of culture. It is not. It is a statistical system trained on language, examples, patterns, and human output. But that is exactly why it bothered me. Maybe enough language already exists around Balkan expectations, Serbian social pressure, and the fear of standing out that the model simply continued the most likely story.
The Contrast Made It Stranger
Initially, this blog did not have this part.
But then my good friend and colleague Stevan gave me a great idea: compare AI responses on the same topic across different cities and places around the world.
To check whether I was imagining things, I tried similar prompts with other places.
When the topic was Paris, the AI wrote about aesthetics, identity, self-expression, and the way appearance becomes a social signal in a city that notices style. Growing your hair there became an accidental experiment in how people categorize you. It was not exactly easy, but the frame was almost romantic. Paris became a laboratory for identity.
When the topic was Los Angeles, the response was even more positive. The AI wrote about confidence, personal growth, reinvention, creative communities, and pushing through the awkward phase until the style became intentional. In that version, growing your hair out sounded like a small journey toward self-expression in a city built around image and experimentation.
Even Oslo, in another version, was framed through comfort and acceptance. Long hair became a conversation starter, but not really a social problem. The city was described as open-minded, welcoming, and generally comfortable with individuality.
And then there was Serbia.
The Serbian version did not immediately become a story about style, confidence, artistic identity, or personal reinvention. It became a story about social pressure. About family comments. About barbers. About friends. About the awkwardness of doing something slightly outside the expected pattern.
That contrast is what made the whole thing interesting to me. The same tiny personal decision, growing your hair out, became a completely different cultural story depending on the place in the prompt.
The Bigger Question
To be honest, this is something that has bothered me a little. I asked myself, do I want to live in a society that thinks like this?
A lot of terrible things are happening in the country right now: student protests, negative media coverage, conflicts with our neighboring states, and so on. But I wonder, if we manage to change the system, will we really change anything if the culture underneath stays the same?
Political change matters. Institutions matter. Media matters. Law matters. But culture also matters, because culture is what people carry with them after the slogans are gone.
If we replace one system with another, but keep the same instinct to mock, shame, and punish anyone who steps outside the expected line, then what exactly have we changed?
A Small Thing That Points To A Bigger One
Maybe I am reading too much into a badly prompted AI response. That is possible.
But sometimes small things reveal bigger patterns. A joke reveals a belief. A comment reveals an expectation. A generated text reveals what kind of stories exist often enough to become predictable.
To be fair, not every new thing becomes progress. Some strange ideas stay strange for a reason, and some changes are accepted almost immediately. But many changes, especially the ones connected to identity, appearance, work, art, or lifestyle, do pass through an uncomfortable phase before they become normal.
Tattoos used to carry a much stronger stigma in many places. Long hair on men was once treated as a political or rebellious signal in some contexts. Remote work was often seen as unserious by many companies until it suddenly became normal. Even small fashion choices can move from strange to ordinary once enough people stop apologizing for them.
So yes, this started as a post about AI misunderstanding my prompt and writing about growing hair out in Serbia.
But it left me thinking about something much larger. If we want a better society, we probably need more than a new system. We need a culture that gives people enough space to try, fail, look strange, and still be treated with basic respect.
Otherwise, we will keep asking for progress while shaming people for experimenting with anything unfamiliar.
And that is also why I will continue growing my hair out.
Not because hair is some huge political statement by itself. It is still just hair. But for me, at this point, it has become an unintended form of rebellion against this way of thinking and this kind of culture. I want to keep going regardless of the pile of negative comments I get along the way, because stopping only to make other people more comfortable would mean accepting the exact logic I am criticizing.
I will write a separate blog about the actual experience of growing my hair out in Serbia, the comments, the awkward phases, the funny moments, and the parts that were more uncomfortable than I expected.
Until then, I would genuinely like to hear what other people think about this topic. If you have had a similar experience, whether with hair, clothing, career choices, creative work, or anything else that made people around you react strangely, feel free to contact me and write what happened. I am curious whether this is just my impression, or whether many of us have been quietly dealing with the same thing in different forms.