Hi. My name is Hoan Ton-That, and I’m addicted to Claude Code. I’m a lifelong programmer and the founder and former CEO of Clearview AI, the country’s first major facial recognition company that used AI, and where I wrote the first version of our software myself.
When I started Clearview, it ended up landing on the front page of The New York Times in January 2020 with the headline “The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It.” We had built a groundbreaking facial recognition technology, which allowed law enforcement to search billions of public images just by uploading a photo of a face. The technology helped law enforcement solve crimes involving children, human trafficking, and financial fraud.
The reaction to our new technology raised concerns from privacy advocates and the public. Today’s simultaneous fear and excitement around AI coding tools remind me of what I went through with Clearview, and what any new technology goes through.
Two months ago I started using Claude Code, OpenAI’s Codex, and Cursor. I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had programming, and I can now build software that used to take months in a matter of days.
