Dec. 4, 2024
Look, I wouldn’t normally be writing this early in the day, but my bourbon’s getting warm and these government warnings about AI are colder than my ex-wife’s shoulder. So here we go.
Some suit from the British government just announced that AI is “transforming the cyber threat landscape.” No shit, Sherlock. Next thing they’ll tell us is that drinking makes you piss more. But let’s dig into this steaming pile of obvious while I pour another.
Dec. 4, 2024
You know what’s funny? Twenty years ago, parents were freaking out because their kids might talk to strangers in AOL chatrooms. Now they’re completely oblivious while their precious offspring are falling in love with chatbots.
takes long pull from bourbon
Let me tell you something about the latest research that crossed my desk at 3 AM while I was nursing my fourth Wild Turkey. Some brainiacs at the University of Illinois decided to study what teens are really doing with AI. Turns out, while Mom and Dad think little Timmy is using ChatGPT to write his book reports, he’s actually pouring his heart out to a digital waifu named Sakura-chan who “really gets him.”
Dec. 3, 2024
Let’s talk about AI hallucinations, those fascinating moments when our artificial companions decide to become creative writers without informing us of their literary aspirations. The latest research reveals something rather amusing: sometimes these systems make things up even when they actually know the correct answer. It’s like having a friend who knows the directions but decides to take you on a scenic detour through fantasy land instead.
The computational architecture behind this phenomenon is particularly interesting. We’ve discovered there are actually two distinct types of hallucinations: what researchers call HK- (when the AI genuinely doesn’t know something and just makes stuff up) and HK+ (when it knows the answer but chooses chaos anyway). It’s rather like the difference between a student who didn’t study for the exam and one who studied but decided to write about their favorite conspiracy theory instead.
Dec. 3, 2024
Let’s talk about how we’re about to recompile the entire educational stack of humanity. The news piece presents seven trends for 2025, but what we’re really looking at is something far more fascinating: the first large-scale attempt to refactor human knowledge transmission since the invention of standardized education.
Think of traditional education as MS-DOS: linear, batch-processed, and terribly unforgiving of runtime errors. What we’re witnessing now is the emergence of Education OS 2.0 - a distributed, neural-network-inspired system that’s trying to figure out how to optimize itself while running.
Dec. 3, 2024
Here’s a fascinating puzzle: We’ve created software systems so complex that we now need software to help us manage our software. And guess what? We don’t have enough people who understand how to manage that software either. Welcome to the infinite regression of modern digital transformation.
Let’s dive into what I like to call “The ServiceNow Paradox.” Picture this: You’re a large organization drowning in manual processes. You discover ServiceNow, a platform that promises to digitize and automate everything from IT helpdesks to HR workflows. It’s like having a digital butler who knows exactly how to handle every business process. Sounds perfect, right?
Dec. 3, 2024
There’s a delightful irony in discovering that artificial intelligence has mastered the art of corporate speak before mastering actual human communication. According to a recent study by Originality AI, more than half of LinkedIn’s longer posts are now AI-assisted, which explains why scrolling through LinkedIn feels increasingly like reading a procedurally generated management consultant simulator.
The fascinating aspect isn’t just the prevalence of AI content, but how seamlessly it blended in. Consider this: LinkedIn inadvertently created the perfect petri dish for artificial content. The platform’s notorious “professional language” had already evolved into such a formulaic pattern that it was essentially a compression algorithm for human status signaling. When you think about it, corporate speak is just a finite set of interchangeable modules: “leverage synergies,” “drive innovation,” “thought leadership,” arranged in predictable patterns to signal professional competence.
Dec. 3, 2024
Let’s talk about the inevitability of advertising in AI systems, or what happens when computational idealism meets economic reality. OpenAI’s recent moves toward advertising shouldn’t surprise anyone who understands how information processing systems evolve under resource constraints.
Here’s the fascinating part: OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit dedicated to beneficial AI, is following a path as predictable as a deterministic algorithm. They’re hiring ad executives from Google and Meta, while their CFO Sarah Friar performs the classic corporate dance of “we’re exploring options” followed by “we have no active plans.” It’s like watching a chess game where you can see the checkmate coming five moves ahead.
Dec. 2, 2024
There’s something delightfully ironic about Sam Altman, a human, explaining how companies will eventually not need humans. It’s like a turkey enthusiastically describing the perfect Thanksgiving dinner recipe. But let’s dive into this fascinating glimpse of our algorithmic future, shall we?
The recent conversation between Altman and Garry Tan reveals something profound about the trajectory of organizational intelligence. We’re witnessing the emergence of what I’d call “pure information processors” - entities that might make our current corporations look like amoebas playing chess.
Dec. 2, 2024
There’s something delightfully human about our persistent belief that if we just make things bigger, they’ll automatically get better. It’s as if somewhere in our collective consciousness, we’re still those kids stacking blocks higher and higher, convinced that eventually we’ll reach the clouds.
The current debate about AI scaling limitations reminds me of a fundamental truth about complex systems: they rarely follow our intuitive expectations. We’re currently witnessing what I call the “Great Scaling Confusion” - the belief that if we just pump more compute power and data into our models, they’ll somehow transform into the artificial general intelligence we’ve been dreaming about.
Dec. 1, 2024
There’s a delightful irony in how we’ve managed to take the crystal-clear concept of “open source” and transform it into something as opaque as a neural network’s decision-making process. The recent Nature analysis by Widder, Whittaker, and West perfectly illustrates how we’ve wandered into a peculiar cognitive trap of our own making.
Let’s start with a fundamental observation: What we call “open AI” today is about as open as a bank vault with a window display. You can peek in, but good luck accessing what’s inside without the proper credentials and infrastructure.