Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

More Thoughts On The Economics Of AI Not Adding Up

Math is hard. Harder still when you ignore the math.

I wrote a piece last month expressing some thoughts on how and why I think the economics of Artificial Intelligence don’t add up. I’m expanding on a couple of those thoughts.

First, the cold feet of the bean counters are getting colder when it comes to the cost of token usage. Tokens, being the measure of how the cost of computing all of those requests to whatever AI engine is waiting to invoice for hallucinating, are proving to still be expensive and probably will be for some time to come. Unless the costs have been vastly overvalued to increase margins, those costs aren’t going to come down any time soon.

Second, in order to keep the pumps primed the race seems to be shifting from cloud servers to on device use. That sounds smart. It certainly is as a possible security measure and selling point. But at the moment, and probably in the end, already rising costs of hardware will continue to inflate as the memory demands needed to turn those on device dreams into hallucinations escalate. Segmentation of the market will continue.

Already we’re seeing strong hints that more and more memory is required to run the latest and supposedly greatest. That means newer devices with more memory, already becoming too expensive a proposition for many. As an example, only the newest Apple devices will be able to run all of the new features of Siri AI. Frankly, I don’t think that will turn into big new hardware upgrade cycles.

Third, for those already turned off and pushing back on the AI curve I don’t think any of this matters at the moment. Will it matter down the road? Most likely, yes. It’s not about more expensive devices or service prices, it will all be about how the costs are spread around in other ways that we’ll never really see outlined in any price or feature comparison.

The bottom line is still the bottom line. Costs are going to continue to rise one way or the other, whether bubbles pop or not. And then the advertising will kick in.

(Image from Viktoria_P on Shutterstock)

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Symbols Matter and Algae Blooms

Mother Nature’s sense of humor

Symbols matter. It’s why so many are upset that so many symbols are being desecrated and destroyed by despicable people. That’s certainly true in Washington DC given the current regime’s attempts to remake not only long revered symbols but also way of life.

Reflecting Pool Full of Algae Science 2281587520.jpg.

Perhaps that’s why each time I see a picture of the algae blooms that are taking over the Reflecting Pool on the mall, I laugh and welcome the karma.

Maybe Mother Nature and her sense of humor will have a hand in the end of some of this. Wish she’d hurry up.

Siri AI and The Spam Call Problem

Put AI to work banishing spam

Listening to podcasts after each WWDC is always a bit of information overload, but occasionally you catch a bit of analysis that seems perhaps pertinent.

One of the podcasts I listen to his John Gruber’s Talk Show Live event that he’s been hosting for a few years now. After his infamous Something Is Wrong In The State of Cupertino post last year, Apple execs stayed away after having been guests in years previous. They stayed away this year as well.

This year, like last, Gruber put together a panel that featured The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Joanna Stern, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, now with her own gig, New Things With Joanna Stern. This year and last offered excellent commentary by both, and given the wait and see cynical posture I’ve adopted for all of Apple’s upcoming offerings, worth a listen.

One interesting tidbit stood out that I want to highlight in the context of my ongoing complaints and requests to Apple about making the handling of spam and unwanted phone calls easier.

Joanna seemed to be quite impressed with what she’s seen of Siri AI in the early going, citing a number of examples that she tried out during the event. The one that stood out to me is this:

I said, “What could I do that’s fun near the California Theater? I have some time to to kill,” and I don’t know if… I don’t know exactly what was the prompt or what was the thing, but it started suggesting things I could do locally. But also, it had access to my voicemail, so it knew that I had just gotten a message from my uncle who asked me to speak at his book club, and it said, “You… you could get back to my your uncle about his book club engagement, you would have some time to do that.” Okay, that’s crazy. It really is, right? And but what if that was sensitive information, right?

The key is Siri AI having access to voice mail. Regardless of however you feel about what data and info Siri AI needs to have about you to develop “Personal Context,” if Siri AI has access to your voice mail it seems it should be a relatively easy technological hop, skip, and jump to just automatically delete the flood of spam calls that have already figured out ways around any of the current wack-a-mole tricks that are being used.

Obviously the larger point Joanna makes about “Personal Context” and a new level of trust is spot on. It is one many iPhone users will have to reckon with. But I’ll tell you this. For my own personal context, if Siri AI can automatically banish to digital hell all of the fake calls that now use names to try and circumvent current spam call prevention I’ll be grateful.

The only reasons I can think of for Siri AI (or Google’s Gemini on Android phones) are business reasons and relationships with the mobile carriers. Apple’s “Personal Context” or Google’s “Personal Intelligence” are the names of the game, or so they claim. It seems logical to me that the technology exists to eradicate more of this curse that same technology makes possible and we all are prey to, whether it be phone calls, emails, or texts.

Sunday Morning Reading

Searching for normal in abnormal places

Time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. Sharing good writing is a normal thing to do. Maybe that’s abnormal. Don’t know. Don’t care. Defining normal is a tricky subjective thing. But then trying to define most things these days feels, well…almsot abnormal.

Just be normal. Is that a “new normal” or last week’s “old normal?” Do we crave normality? Does it matter? Normally, I’d have more to say, but instead check out JA Westenberg’s Just Be Normal About Things.

Mathew Ingram takes on the subject of consciousness, one of the latest discussions bopping around the bits and bytes surrounding AI, with his piece, Is Atlantic Writer Ted Chiang Conscious? How Do We Know? If you ask me, that fact that this is being discussed calls whatever the idea of consciousness is into question. Doesn’t feel normal. For that matter doesn’t feel abnormal either. Just weird.

Mike Masnick states the obvious in CEOs Who Think AI Replaces Their Employees Are Just Bad CEOs.

David Todd McCarty calls his piece The Slow News Moment. I like his description better. “How we became terrorized by the 24-hour news cycle and what we might do to combat the charade of exigency.” Perhaps less is more normal.

“We are being robbed by the worst people in the world,” says Kelly Hayes in The Heist State. Spot on, given that blatant thievery is the new normal these days.

Everywhere you look life is a scam. That is indeed far too normal. Neil Steinberg takes on one that targeted him and other writers in We Love Your Book! Now Give Us Money. Funny stuff.

Protect The Weird, Slow and Inefficient. Natasha MH thinks AI might one day become as invisible a tool to the process of writing as the typewriter did in its day. But look again. The tools don’t matter as much as the desire.

(Image from Justin Simmonds on Unsplash.)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Trump’s Name Finally Comes Off The Kennedy Center

May his named be erased from so much more.

Well, that happened. Finally. Trump’s desecrating name was finally removed from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after a judge ruled to make it so.

Photo of worker removing Donald Trump's name from the Kennedy Center by AP photographer Cliff Owen

It took a while, thanks to some legal cry-babying from Trump’s legal bunglers trying to soothe his injured and fragile ego. The act didn’t quite meet the June 12th deadline, but eventually under the cover of darkness and behind a curtain, the name came down after the public, via live streams on the Internet, got lessons in erecting scaffolding. The photo above was captured by Cliff Owen of the Associated Press and so far is the only one I’ve seen with a worker’s hands removing one of the letters.

The Kennedy Center has told the judge that all references to name have been removed from the building, website, and printed materials.

Of course the pedophile-in-chief’s name should have never been put there in the first place. It was a perversion. The removal is a small victory. Even if largely symbolic in a wellspring of atrocities. There’s no telling how long it will take to rebuild the damage he’s done to the Kennedy Center as an institution and the rest of what he’s destroyed.

But it is a bright moment in all of the darkness and hopefully breeds more anger and anticipation for ripping to shreds any of the other atrocious marks this less than human, but very real human monstrosity has visited on all of us.

The facade certainly looks better.

As Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times reminds us:

I want to live long enough to dance in the street when that happens. Let there be bonfires to light the night skies.

Update: The photo above of the facade with Trump’s name removed is from pre-Trump days. Apparently the tarp that covered the removal is still there and may be for some time.

Why Can’t We Fix These Nags?

We’re not loyal customers. We’re data points.

There are so many things we become numb to. See something often enough and you almost ignore it’s there. Constant reminders and notifications about things to buy are certainly in that category. You get used to them, know they won’t really go away, and yet every now and then, one of them just jumps off the screen and hits you wrong and pisses you off.

The ones that really grate are the ones that encourage me to buy something that I already own or subscribe to, or deals I’m ineligible for. Like the “Don’t Miss 3 Free Months of Music” one pictured above. I’ve been an Apple Music subscriber for longer than I can remember, yet I keep getting this offer that’s obviously aimed at new customers. I find it insulting.

Look I get it. Companies want and need new customers. Older customers drop off as the prices inevitability rise. Discounts and free trials always entice. But to insult existing and long term companies with offers that essentially undercut the established relationship is just that. Insulting.

With all of the latest and greatest tech innovations, why can’t companies find a way to know that we’re already a customer and keep from sending us these offers that insult loyal users for already supporting them? Based on the blizzard of emails, text spam, and notifications you almost instantly receive after buying a product from other companies selling the same thing that tech obviously exists. Maybe all of these moves into “personnel context” will solve that. I doubt it. In fact, I will bet that it will only make the situation worse.

Customer loyalty hasn’t been what it used to be for quite a long time. That’s old school, corner store thinking. Today we’re not viewed as customers. Just another data point.

Spider-Noir: A Mini Review

Not great, but great fun.

The Chicago Cubs have decided to essentially quit acting like a professional baseball team. Chock-full of talent, yet seemingly unable to play the game. My wife is away on a theatre gig. (The show opened wonderfully last night.) So I decided I needed an entertaining distraction and queued up Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot’s Spider-Noir, now streaming on Prime Video. Bottom line, it is a stylish, entertaining distraction, and a treat for fans of the noir genre.

I won’t call the eight-episode series great by any means, but the fun makes up for it. Taking yet another Marvel Comics hero from yet another alternate Marvel universe, Spider-Man Noir, and bringing him to the screen minus the “man” in the name, this version follows an aging private investigator, who is also a web-slinging superhero, through a depression era New York City in the 1930’s. Fighting with his past and the bad guys, it’s a bit of a romp that at times can’t decide what it wants to be, but in the end sticks the landing.

You get a choice of two ways to view the series. In what the filmmakers call Authentic Black and White or True-Hue Color. I recommend the black and white version. I checked out the True-Hue Color but that’s not for me. Your mileage may vary, but hey, the word “noir” is in the damn title, so follow the lead you’re given.

Nicholas Cage stars as the troubled leading superhero who isn’t sure he wants to be one. Down on his luck. Tough times. Hard bitten. (Literally.) He’s at times a bit over the top in that Nicholas Cage kind of way, but weirdly it works as the choices largely hold up, even as they often veer the show into comedy more than the hard-boiled wit I associate with the genre.

Brendan Glesson gives a boffo performance as the big bad in the show. Jack Huston and Andrew Lewis Caldwell as Flint Marko/Sandman and Dirk Leydon/Megawatt bring fun and serious menace to their characters trapped and wrapped in one of the show’s central mysteries. The rest of the cast fills their roles nicely and everyone enjoys chewing the scenery at one point or the other.

As to the production, the black and white version looks terrific. It’s full of all the shadows, cigarette smoke, femme fatales, crooked pols, gangsters, grit, lots of rain, period music, and all the clichés you expect from a noir detective mystery. The occasional nods to other noir classics are added treats.

The story gets more convoluted and drawn out than I think it needs to, but that’s the name of the game in streaming entertainment these days. Even so, in the end, it’s a cut above the rest, and filled the bill I was looking for. Indeed, a fun and entertaining distraction.

AI May Make Mistakes But Court Finds AI Makers Are Still Responsible

You can’t take humans out of the chain of responsibility

By now everyone is familiar with the caveats every AI company trots out like Surgeon General’s warnings on tobacco products. AI can make mistakes, so you need to double check. Great sales pitch. Better liability protection. Some lawyers obviously dreamed that up, but it appears there’s a chance they might need to dream again.

Googles Gemini AI Is Reading Your Emails_AdobeStock_1766730889_FT.

According to an article in Ars Technica, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews. Given how Google is reinventing Search and itself this might turn into a problem, and not just for Google.

I love the title of the Ars Technica article describing the case by Ashley Belanger that says simply: Nobody Needs AI To Search The Internet, Court Says in Ruling Against Google. Google recently would beg to differ. Here’s an excerpt for the Ars Technica article:

Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.

But the court found that, unlike traditional search engines that merely present lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool made “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on its own misinterpretation of links on the Internet.

That’s a problem, the court said, because while publishers may have been able to sue to stop third parties from publishing defamatory statements appearing in Google search results, only Google can correct the underlying algorithm and outputs displayed in AI Overviews.

The bottom line it seems to me is if an AI Overview or other result summary hallucinates something false and perhaps defamatory, someone somewhere, meaning a human someone(s), can held responsible.

I’m sure appeals are already being worked on for this preliminary ruling. So the story will continue to unfold.

As far as U.S. users might be concerned we’re already seeing other countries treating technology issues very differently in the European Union and elsewhere than on our own shores. Things are very different here in the land where bribery no longer masquerades as politics. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty strong statement that bears some attention regardless of where you live and where you search the Internet from.

Electronic Shelf Labels Leave Me Squinting

Convenience for who exactly?

Depending on where you live and where you shop you’ve probably run across a store or two that may now be using Electronic Shelf Labels to display product prices. I’ve seen them in the several different grocery stores I shop. There are some interesting concerns about these that I’ll get into below, but first I want to address what I see. Or can’t.

I understand that these new labels will make it easier for stores to change prices. No more paper signs, or employees cluttering up the aisles while slapping on new price tags. (Blocking store aisles is lately reserved for the carts gathering items for people doing curbside pickup or Instacart.)

What these Electronic Store Label’s don’t do is make it easy on customers. Especially those of us with older eyes who can hardly read the fine print. Also those of us with older knees and hips who have a tough time bending down to read the tiny print on lower shelves.

I fall into both categories. I have always carried a pair of reading glasses with me when I grocery shop, but even with those I can’t read the pricing info placed so close to the floor.

I’ve spoken with several store managers about this, all of whom seem sympathetic as they shrug their shoulders blaming corporate bosses for the change.

I’ve resorted to taking pictures with my smartphone so I can check the info, which I guess isn’t necessarily a bad thing, But it is an inconvenient one. I find this move as distinctly inconvenient and as unpleasant a shopping experience as I did when stores all moved to self-checkout as their preferred way of moving customers through checkout lines like cattle.

The other issues I spoke about earlier are concerns some have about how the ease of changing prices could affect consumers. Think surge pricing or dynamic pricing based on the time of day or popularity of a product. That’s bound to happen somewhere. (Don’t ever put anything beyond the imagination of bean counter.)

Of course we’ll probably also see technical difficulties causing confusion. Check out this one.

I’m reasonably sure that’s not a Rock Creek Bike costing $112 somehow misplaced in the processed cheese aisle that’s causing blank displays all around.

I’m sure we’ll hear more about this as Electronic Shelf Labeling becomes more widespread. But in the meantime, give customers a break with the tiny print in places to difficult to read.

The Siri AI Demo Apple Should Have Done

One day perhaps we’ll move beyond AI cliché demos.

My nephew occasionally takes a look at this blog and gives me feedback on what I think and write. Actually, he mostly gives me shit. He certainly does when I write about Artificial Intelligence. He often asks why I’m so “down” on AI. At least we agree on politics.

Apple Executive Mike Rockwell demos Siri AI at WWDC 2026

I keep reminding him that I’m not “down” on the technology per se. I’d love to see the press release announcing AI led to a a cure for cancer. Who wouldn’t? I’m down on the way it continues to be sold to us and the ramifications that brings on so many levels, while still feeling like it’s not what the sellers keep promising. (I also remind him to read what I write more carefully, but he’s probably using some AI to summarize what I write.)

In truth, that’s the essence of my skeptical reaction to what we know as AI at the moment. There’s a lot going on, but how it’s being sold to most consumers still feels like it will ultimately be no more, no less than just another tool we use on a computer, after exacting high costs to do so, and dumbing down the general learning curve in the bargain.

Take for example the demos we constantly see about what AI can do when each company rolls out its latest version. As demos they all look slick as far as party and trip planning go.

(Coding is another case entirely. I’m not talking about that here, simply because I don’t have the expertise to do so. I’m strictly speaking of the sell to consumers.)

Even Apple fell back on these examples that have become clichés in this year’s WWDC 2026 announcement. Those clichés define the market companies think are ripe for the come on and then the plucking. I’m guessing they also define the current limitations of the technology. Or at least the limitations companies don’t want to risk pushing beyond in a live demo.

Here’s the AI Siri demo I wish Apple had shown us yesterday.

If you watched Apple’s keynote presentation you might remember this slide.

Maybe not. It flew by pretty quickly. It’s a word cloud of all of the other non Siri AI improvements Apple is bringing to its various operating systems this year.

Yes, the print is that tiny and crammed together. To call it unreadable is accurate. For those who didn’t watch the demo, the length of time it was on our screens was equally tiny, certainly compared to all the travel time each presenter took to walk on and hit their mark prior to speaking. To be honest, the slide’s quick and unreadable inclusion felt insulting given the long list of improvements it’s touting.

(To my knowledge no such list appears yet in Apple’s Newsroom or on its website heralding the other announcements. If I’m wrong, point me to it and I’ll link to it here. I’m sure it won’t be long before one of the sites that covers Apple distills it down and publishes it. Probably using AI.)

(UPDATE: Right after hitting publish, I noticed that John Gruber linked to this post on the Oneberri Blog listing all of those improvements.)

What if Mike Rockwell, the Apple Executive who did the Siri AI demos, had asked Siri AI to take that slide, and present the info into a bulleted list in Apple Notes, and then prepare a PDF for distribution? In the post keynote tech talk he and other Apple execs participated in, he could have followed that up by asking Siri AI to distribute the PDF to the other Apple execs on stage. Essentially it would have demonstrated the same Siri AI capability to gather info across native Apple apps, using context, in the same way the clichéd party planning demos do.

It certainly would have been more impressive than the usual clichés.

Perhaps AI Siri and the apps needed to do that work aren’t ready for such a challenge just yet. Things are still in beta after all. Perhaps it’s just too risky to stray outside of what’s made these kinds of demos a laughable cliché. Perhaps we’ll get there someday. Who knows?

Meanwhile I’ll remain “down” on AI the way my nephew likes to give me shit about my AI skepticism. I hope one day this technology might indeed lead to a cure for cancer. I also hope my nephew keeps reading this blog. It might help him learn to think for himself more often. 😉