2025 wasn't the year of the flying car or the cure for cancer; it was the year humanity collectively decided to stop trying. Across boardrooms in Silicon Valley and lecture halls in Nairobi, a new philosophy took hold: why strive for excellence when artificial intelligence can deliver a result that is simply "good enough"? This was the year of the "vibe."

This shift represents a fundamental decoupling from reality. While the trend began post-pandemic, it accelerated aggressively this year as AI agents moved from novelty to necessity. For Kenyans navigating a digital economy, the implications are profound. We are no longer just consumers of technology; we are becoming passive observers of our own work, surrendering critical thinking to algorithms that prioritize speed over substance.

The Rise of 'Vibe Coding'

The turning point arrived in February, when OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding.” He described a workflow where developers “fully give in to the vibes,” pasting error messages into AI tools without reading the code or understanding the fix. “I ‘Accept All’ always,” Karpathy admitted on X. “I don’t read the diffs anymore.”

This approach has bled into the corporate world. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski and Google CEO Sundar Pichai have both championed this methodology, with Pichai calling the generation of AI code “delightful.” For Kenya’s "Silicon Savannah," this trend poses a double-edged sword. While it lowers the barrier to entry for young developers in Nairobi, it risks creating a generation of engineers who can build apps but cannot debug them when the "vibes" go wrong.

Collins Dictionary named "vibe coding" its Word of the Year, cementing the shift. But the surrender didn't stop at software development. It infiltrated the very way we communicate and learn.

The Academic Integrity Crisis

The education sector has arguably suffered the heaviest blow. "Vibe writing"—churning out essays via AI with little regard for quality—has become endemic. TurnItIn, the plagiarism detection software widely used by Kenyan universities, estimated that one in five college papers submitted globally last year contained signs of AI generation.

This aligns with data from Inside Higher Ed, which found that 20% of students admitted to outsourcing their essays to bots. The danger for the Kenyan workforce is palpable: if degrees are earned through "vibes" rather than rigorous study, the competency of future professionals—from lawyers to policy analysts—stands on shaky ground. Even Microsoft legitimized this apathy, adopting the term “vibe writing” for its Copilot features in Word.

The Trillion-Shilling Bubble

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this phenomenon is the economic house of cards it has built. Tech giants are currently burning through billions of dollars—hundreds of billions of Kenya Shillings—every quarter. They are building massive data centers on the gamble that raw processing power will eventually yield profit.

• Vibe Valuations: Companies are priced on hype rather than revenue.
• Vibe Lifing: New tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas promise to handle grocery shopping and spreadsheets, despite frequent "hallucinations" (like ordering 4,000 pounds of meat instead of patties).
• The Reality Check: These firms are staying afloat on investment rounds that value them far higher than their actual output warrants.

As these companies chase "vibe revenue," the global economy sits precariously on a bubble fueled by speculation. If—or when—this bubble bursts, the shockwaves will be felt from Wall Street to the Nairobi Securities Exchange. For now, the world continues to ride the vibes, hoping that when the music stops, the AI will know what to do. But as any seasoned developer knows, hope is not a strategy.