chatgpt – Page 2 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

What Does A “Siri That Works” Mean?

“An acre of performance is worth a whole land of promise.”

You know what a litany is. It’s a series of prayers with predictable responses, learned, ingrained, and repeated without much thought. Call it “call and response.” As we finally arrive at the beginning of Apple’s WWDC 2026 today, the call has been summarized down to Apple needs a Siri that works.

But how the hell do you respond to that?

Siri was once a surprising computer gimmick, before Apple got its hand on it in 2010. Siri has been surprisingly bad at most things ever since. Sure you can set a timer, or a reminder, occasionally play the right play list and a few other things. If that were the extent of the promise the jokes wouldn’t be funny. But the promises were always more. They never lived up to the personal assistant aspirations. It’s still largely a gimmick. One too easily made fun of.

Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant, (now Gemini) have taken bigger steps forward than Siri, but also continue to fall down and scrape their knees. Chatbots have come along and for some have replaced the need for someone to talk to. But each of those efforts still yield mistakes and failures. You know the way, humans do.

So do pleas for a “Siri that works” mean something that will always work? I doubt it. I think the expectation is that these chatbot like companions will continue to fail. Again, the way humans do. But you can’t sell that.

Does it mean a “Siri that works” does something new? I doubt that also. The entire promise of computer assistants, chatbots and artificial intelligence is to do things we already do more efficiently. In fact, that’s the history of computing. When spreadsheets replaced pencils, green eyeshades, and then calculators we were on to something.

We haven’t yet figured out a way to help us communicate better in person, much less in front of a screen or into a microphone. A “working Siri” (or any other chatbot) isn’t going to help us with that. They may teach us a new way to communicate to set that reminder, but the respondents failure makes us all feel like we’re wrong. Until we just stop talking.

I’m not sure how you reconcile doing things more efficiently with the failure rate. One that seems all but guaranteed by the “mistakes will happen” caveats that prove lawyers always earn their keep. Frankly, I don’t ever see a “fire and forget it” guarantee in what remains of my lifetime. Maybe someday.

Word is that whatever Apple rolls out as “a working Siri” will roll out with a beta label attached to it. That’s a good preemptive legal response, but a sad commentary on the state of things. We expect things to go wrong in betas. Talk about setting a low bar. Even a necessary one.

Speaking of the history of computing, when it comes to mobile computing we’ve gone through at least one cycle where the focus shifted away from keeping us addicted to our phones, to an entire wave of ways to help us escape the tyranny of the small screens, put them down and enjoy more of life without them. Call me crazy, but the rush to chatting away to smartphones, AirPods, pendants, pucks, cars, etc… seems contradictory to solving our tech addictions. Out with the old trend, in with the rerun.

Gimmicks work. They help sell devices and feed trends. Think pet rocks. We’re already seeing talk of children’s toys with AI voice assistants and reactions against them. At least this time around the reactions are coming more quickly.

I’m guessing it’s not long before we see a pet rock product that contains an AI powered voice assistant. We can always use another paperweight.

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

The art of dancing on the line that separates and defines humanity

It was a good week for reading good writing. It’s a better week for sharing what popped up. A variety of topics, spanning art and the making and selling of it, technology — which these days is more about the selling than the tech — the humanity, or lack thereof, behind it all, and…well to continue a list would sell it all short. Here’s hoping you enjoy the links shared in today’s Sunday Morning Reading as much as I enjoy sharing them. Yia Mas!

An overhead, first-person perspective shows a person lying on their back on a teal couch, holding open a large book to read. The person's head is closest to the foreground, with long, blonde-streaked hair spilling downward. They are wearing a deep maroon, long-sleeved sweater and light grey sweatpants. Image from Matias north v8DSLoY80Xk unsplash.

Om Malik wrote one of the best things I’ve read in quite some time. We Are Living In Pinocchio’s World is about lying. It’s about AI. It’s about a pen. But it’s about so much more.

Cory Doctorow’s Refining Humanity takes on our propensity for explanation, personhood for machines, and that line we seem to want to dance with defining just what makes us human in the midst of it all.

Meanwhile Martyn Berlin of Martyn’s Random Musings finds himself an outcast in To Have A Moral Stance On AI Is To Be An Outcast, And It Sucks.

At what cost art? Natasha MH wonders and writes about it in Sold At A Premium. At what cost, anything?

Mike Masnick thinks it’s not about whether technology is inherently good or bad, liberating or oppressive. You could argue the same could be said about most aspects of human endeavor. But then that’s the point. Tech is just another in a long line. Check out Enshittification, Despotification, And The Open Internet.

“The only conviction worth having is the kind you could lose tomorrow and survive it.” JA Westenberg warns us not to take a pill, regardless of color in Be Thou Not Pilled.

Mathew Ingram wonders Have Investors In AI Companies Lost Their Minds? I’m not sure we can call them investors any more. As to their minds? No comment.

Two interesting takes on what’s going on the business of making movies in Hollywood that occasionally and almost accidentally is about making art. M.G. Siegler talks about how YouTube Beats AI To Disrupting Hollywood. Meanwhile Sonny Bunch takes a look at The Thoughtlessness of AI Filmmaking.

Word came down this week that a restaurant was finally going to fill one of the retail spaces in the Trump Tower in Chicago, after they had all sat empty for seventeen years. Neil Steinberg asks Will Chicago Happily Eat Dolmades And Drink Roditis In Trump Tower?

To close, click through the popover on John Gruber’s post This Is A Dickover, and give the post a read. You know what a Dickover is. Now you have a name for it.

(Image from Matias North 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.

Segmenting The Future Of Computing

The days when the costs of technology decreasing over time have passed.

I’ve been writing a small bit about the segmentation I see coming in how we currently think of computing. Yes, it’s about Artificial Intelligence, and yes, it’s about money. There’s no question that we’re already seeing price increases due to chip shortages, but I’m thinking that’s just the beginning of what will make Apple’s reputation of shipping too expensive computers, prior to the MacBook Neo, seem like a memory.

A close-up photograph of overlapping neon signs illuminating a dark background. In the foreground, a prominent bright green neon sign is shaped like a dollar symbol ($\$$) by Aedrian salazar Wy7Gy8ZcW1M unsplash.

There’s no question that the cost associated with Artificial Intelligence is driving this and will continue to do so. The question is how much? Note that in the latest announcements from Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia heralding what’s coming that price tags weren’t revealed. Quite frankly from the way I’m reading the tea leaves scattered among the press releases, most of these companies are skittish because they don’t even know how high the cost curve is going to bend. Or they’re afraid of the sticker shock once they do find the courage to announce them.

The way I see it, the next period of time is going to be one where if you can afford the steeper prices of hardware and AI services, you’ll be able to play on that level. Those that can’t, and may not even need to, will be gradually left behind. Although for many that won’t prove to be that much of a problem given their needs. Initially.

Tell me honestly, what has any AI company promised, prior to this coming age of agents, that most computers can’t already do? Heck, even some of the promises agents can supposedly deliver don’t seem to offer that much more, unless you’re a software developer or in math sciences.

That said, operating systems and software are all being geared up along with consumer hardware to make the expensive side of the equation be the standard.

Already we’re seeing moves away from AI robots doing their work in the various clouds. Companies are prepping local AI models to be installed on devices. Those local models are going to require memory and processing power that’s going to further drive up the hardware costs while possibly reducing the token tax. Gaming hardware is about to become really expensive. Back in the cloud, eventually we’re all going to be paying for search. Probably sooner, rather than later, if you want decent results.

Speaking of taxes. Governments are starting to sniff around with their divining rods, sensing new money reservoirs to be tapped, while watching water resources stretched thin. There’s obviously a thirst. If, when, and where that happens will just add costs to be passed down the line.

Take a look at this quote from Microsoft’s Satya Nadella:

“There are really two stories people can tell about this moment. One is that technology concentrates power, reduces human agency, and leaves to society to absorb the consequences. The other is that we use this next wave to unlock opportunity for developers, scientists, enterprises, and every community. And our job is to make the second story true.”

On the surface it sounds like there’s opportunity for what’s coming to be all inclusive. Clever. Beneath that surface I think Nadella is hinting that unless your computing needs are in fields of endeavor that will require AI to be competitive, you’re at the tail end of that second story and will probably be on the outside looking in while absorbing the consequences. There’s really only one story.

As I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of users who don’t need the latest and greatest hardware and will probably be just fine without. For a time. Unless the big players create operating systems and hardware that segment out some of what will only become compute heavy advances, consumers will eventually find today’s tasks more challenging and less secure as existing hardware slows down and future security updates are released on slower schedules.

Of course that also leaves an opening.

Perhaps companies that offer hardware and services that don’t push whatever current AI envelope is being pushed, might find a willing market. You could argue that Apple’s MacBook Neo, and Dell and others’ recent announcements to counter that somewhat surprising move, might presage this. Without lower entry price points, who knows, a lot of users might just return back to the days of envelopes and snail mail.

That’s probably too extreme a reaction, but we’ve seen similar reactions to technology in the past, some quite recent, once the gee whiz factor has worn off like the letters on cheap keyboards on even expensive computers. Think touch screen displays instead of buttons and dials in cars. Think home automation. Think the Metaverse. Think talking appliances. Think cars and machinery that require maintenance contracts. Think 3D TVs.

Those that love to dabble and explore frontiers and have the money to do so will always seek the next adventure. Go for it. Those who just want to send a birthday greeting, create a holiday card, share a calendar, proofread a document, or search for a local merchant don’t want a hustle or a hassle, or the increased expense that’s obviously coming.

For the moment, the days when the costs of technology decreasing over time have passed.

(Image from Aedrian Salazar on Unsplash)

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Snookered

Time to do better

Damnit. I was snookered.

Photo on 5-14-14 at 3.05 PM.

Those who follow this blog have probably read a Sunday Morning Reading column or two. In that column I link to what I believe to be good writing on important topics that interest me. In the most recent Sunday Morning Reading column I got snookered and posted a link to a piece that is fake, as is the entire Internet publication that posted it.

Now let’s get this straight there’s plenty of blame to go around. I should have checked further into the story prior to linking to it. But as I said in an update to the post, it was a feel good story, and caught my eye at a time when I, and just about everyone else is desperate for any story that offers a ray of hope.

So that’s on me. Apologies to all those who come here.

But there’s also plenty of blame to be pointed at AllChronology.com, the owner of the site Chronology. I’m not linking to them here. The site is easy enough to find. I left the original link up in the original post as a reference, along with an update acknowledging my error.

That website is filled with stories, that I can only assume are AI generated. If you search for the authors of articles (most listed as distinguished) you won’t find the handful I searched for. That handful is enough to let me know that the guiding hand behind this site is connected to a body of rubbish.

So, yes. I’m pissed off. At myself, and at whoever the humans (one can only make the assumption that there is a human presence in their somewhere) are behind this publication. It would be one thing if there were ads on the site. I don’t see any, so I assume it’s just data harvesting in some way or the other. I don’t get the point. Frankly, I don’t think there is one. The logic behind this bastardized effort makes no sense.

The bottom line is we’re living in a world where you can’t trust anything, or anyone. That sucks. I care. I hope you do too. I would hope those who come here trust what I write about and link to and I’m sorry I led you astray on this one.

Time to do better.

The Economics of AI Don’t Add Up

Bottom lines are where everything sinks to eventually

Money talks. Bullshit walks. Bubbles pop, and the world just keeps on burning while the big wheels just keep on turning. Pick a vibe. Pick a cliché. Pick a metaphor. Pick and mangle a song lyric. Just don’t try to pick a winner in the big AI race when it comes to dollars and cents. Or sense. The racers are running in circles, burning the planet and dollars trying to figure out how to keep things on a track no one has figured out quite yet.

Hint: It’s a circle, jerks.

From the beginning the hype about Artificial Intelligence has felt like it’s all about the vibes. So many vibes. I define “the beginning” as when OpenAI took the wraps off of ChatGPT and kick started the race. Maybe they should have just done a Kickstarter.

Those were heady days. I remember everyone thinking ChatGPT would replace Google. Now we’re at the point where Google is trying to replace itself.

Today, chatbots are replacing human connections, and all sorts of crustaceans are being installed on computers, causing some havoc in the hardware markets along the way. Things have now progressed to a point that folks are vibe coding up a storm, now that it seems more doable. And it’s interesting to see and hear some who were initially skeptical about the broad scope of AI now embracing it. For what it’s worth, the current vibe feels to me like AI is heading into its GUI phase of computing, only you need a keyboard or a microphone instead of a mouse to get around on a screen or without one.

And yet, when it comes to the money game, the vibe feels like the math behind all those 0’s and 1’s might not add up.

Corporations are starting to scale back usage now that the bills are coming in. Microsoft and other tech companies are pulling plugs, in most cases for third party access among the employees they haven’t let go. At the same time there’s whispers that AI costs are beginning to exceed the costs of human employees. Corporations are starting to adjust because the beans they are counting don’t look like they will add up and no one has vibe coded an accounting app yet to project when, of if they will.

Consumers are looking at that $20 month subscription cost and backing off while trying to choose which, if any, of the constantly updating models that still promise inaccuracy will give them the best monthly bang for a double sawbuck. To make the math sting even more, Google, OpenAI, Claude, etc… are tossing around $100 a month (and higher) plans for the latest and supposedly best features that make $20 a month feel like a poor man’s vibe.

There’s a technology intersection that has always been on the roadmap for computing technology since the dawn of the personal computer. To an extent, enterprise computing always subsidized consumer technology. The vibes I’m sensing hint that roadmap may be changing, and it won’t just affect the costs of using AI, computer memory, and chip production. It potentially may filter into every facet of life from medical bills, to insurance premiums, to any wholesale or retail concern that might employ AI. Don’t think for a minute that any company is going to simply eat the rising costs of AI usage, or cut back prices should using it somehow actually produce savings from cutting employees.

Call me when you hear the first company touting that they are cutting costs due to AI. Trust me, I won’t be waiting by the phone.

If a vibe has a bottom line, here’s how I see this one. We’re heading into a moment where what we think of as computing and the Internet is going to run on two diverging tracks. It’s becoming obvious that whether someone is running any of the AI robots on their own device or somewhere on the Internet that the costs are more than anyone could have predicted, or thought might become sustainable.

The $20 a month marker was a big hint early on. We were all used to the Internet come on of getting in free, being swamped with ads, and then having to eventually subscribe so our data could be collected. That $20 a month heralded a change, but only at the point of entry.

Given that we all know that advertising is coming to AI, we’re escaping the orbit that we’ve been in for quite some time that most of the Internet was free but required a level of tolerance for advertising. I’m guessing that those who can only afford the $20 a month price tag with ads will think back on the ways we’ve complained about the streaming entertainment services and their ad proliferation as quaint by comparison.

The Circle

That $20 entry fee will rise. So will the more expensive options. I’m actually surprised we haven’t see that already. The fact that AI has to continually train itself to remain relevant means it’s going to continue to need new computing cycles to consume whatever is generated in the future, whether by humans or robots. I don’t think you can build enough data centers on the surface of this planet, under the sea, or in space to afford the churn and burn. That’s the circle. In the end it’s a real estate play that yields only cul-de-sacs.

Take a look at this article from Simon Willison. Unlike my pessimistic vibe on this, Willison seems to think Anthropic and OpenAI have found their product-market fit. He’s spending $200 a month ($100 to each) and considers that a bargain since his usage of the two generated $2,180 change in token use for a month. That math certianly adds up as a good deal in the current moment. Until you consider that at some point the difference between what he’s paying and what he’s using is going to have to be put on somebody’s balance sheet in some way. These companies can’t run at a loss forever.

It’s a good piece by Willison that informs quite a bit on this discussion and worth your time, because I think that’s what the discussion is going to inevitably come down to. Set aside all of the debates about accuracy, copyright, and environmental issues. Set aside the rising consumer backlash. Bottom lines are where everything sinks to eventually.

I admire and am grateful for folks like Willison, Federico Viticci, and others who are exploring this frontier and think we should be paying attention to their efforts and learn from them. Viticci has crafted a few interesting bits of software of late and spent some coin in doing so. I’m enjoying reading about his efforts.

I may be wrong, but it feels like we might be headed to a point that to use some software in the future we’re going to need one of these ever changing and increasingly expensive AI engines on our computers to run some of the software that will be generated in the future. That will certainly come with a price tag. If, (actually in my opinion when) that happens, it will become another border defined by costs, dividing users between those who can afford the entry fee, and those who can’t.

It will also affect far more than our computing lives.

(Image from Viktoria_P on Shutterstock)

AI Foes Are Getting The Terrorist Treatment

Quite a protection racket

I guess the AI models are predicting problems.

It’s obviously apparent that there’s an increasing sense of antagonism building around many of the issues associated with Artificial Intelligence. Data Center protests seem to be getting the most attention. The one thing you can say, is about AI is that it attracts detractors. Couple that up with the Trump administration’s policies to police speech and actions that they find unfavorable and it sounds like the interesting times we live in are about to become more interesting.

According to a report from Wired,

More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers obtained by WIRED show a national shift taking place to surveil this new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat.

I encourage you to read the report. Not only do those of us who have major concerns about Artificial intelligence have all of the implications of the technology push to worry about, but apparently we may have to worry about expressing those concerns.

The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City.

On the one hand you can say that the backlash might be having the desired and necessary effect. On the other, it looks like concerned CEOs are calling in their chits after stuffing money into the pockets of the Trump administration.

Quite a protection racket. In the end, my guess is no one will be protected from any of this.

(Photo by Here Now on Shutterstock)

Sunday Morning Reading

Wandering through the Internet, disregarding along the way

We live in interesting times. I’m spending a lot of my time being interested in watching my grandkids develop, and watching everything around how I thought they might grow up change. In my opinion, change not necessarily for the better. They won’t know what things changed from necessarily, unless they choose to look into it. That assumes they’ll be able to do so the way we can now. I have my doubts about that. Regardless, that’s tomorrow. Here are some links to share in this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

A close-up photograph captures a bronze statue of a young boy sitting on a stone bench outdoors, absorbed in reading a book.

Terry Godier says the Internet is dying. I’m not sure if it’s dying, morphing, collapsing in on itself, or just in the midst of growing pains, but I take the point. Check out The Boring Internet. (That’s a link to the text version. There’s also an animated version here. Quite nicely done.

JA Westenberg believes Nobody Is Destined For Greatness. I happen to agree. Shakespeare gave his greatest comic villain, Malvolio, lines about being born great. I wish I could label our current day villains as comic. Perhaps one day.

Derek Sivers reminds us that Geography Is Four-Dimensional. How true. There’s a reason Shakespeare more often than not capitalized the word “Time.”

Stories about religion occasionally get shared here. Mostly they are stories about how it’s really not religion, but a cover for grift and abuse. This is one of those. He Remade The Southern Baptist Convention In His Image. Then Came The Abuse Allegations by Robert Downen chronicles yet another of those tales we seem to hear far too frequently these days.

For another take involving religion, check out Neil Steinberg’s Being Formed By Christians Does Not A Christian Make. He quotes Thomas Jefferson’s “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” I’m not sure we can say either of those things any more.

There was a bit of a funny fracas after Google’s all in on AI announcements this week at its annual I/O conference. Apparently for a short time after Google announced big changes to Search, you could not Google the word “disregard” and expect the usual quick definition. Google quickly fixed that. The root of the problem? “Disregard” is an AI command that you have to put in a prompt to keep the AI demons from you know, making a mistake. Check out Russell Brandom’s quick story, You Can No Longer Google the Word ‘Disregard.’

Speaking of Artificial Intelligence, the talk is all about agents. (Actually that’s been the talk for a while, the volume is just increasing.) Hayden Field thinks If Google Can’t Make AI Agents Useful, Maybe No One Can. FWIW, I think Hayden is spot on.

In an article The Economist credits as anonymous, someone thinks Vladimir Putin Is Losing His Grip On Russia. Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know about you, but I’m as tired of hearing about autocratic oligarchs losing their grip as I am about hearing all of the promises about generative AI and autonomous driving being just around the corner.

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.

OpenAI Wants Your Financial Info

Fun and games with frontier financing

Oh, ye brave intrepid adventurers trodding through the frontier, trod on. Carve your way into uncharted territory, knowing not what lies beyond the bend. The rest of us will wait. I’m guessing the rest of us are going to be quite content doing so.

This image shows two side-by-side screenshots of a mobile application interface designed for personal finance management, featuring a clean, minimalist aesthetic with a green and white color palette.

News popped today that OpenAI wants users of ChatGPT to provide access to their bank accounts and other financial data.

Read that again.

The chatbot that’s famous for telling us it might make a mistake, and delivering on that promise, wants users to turn over access to their banking accounts to help them better understand their finances.

The article from The Verge I saw pop across my feeds begins its lede with “Your trust in AI is about to be put to the test.” It could have just as easily said, “OpenAI is looking for suckers.”

I’m not going to get into the whys and wherefores of the tech behind this. The article linked above gives you some of that info. TechCrunch has another if you care to look. There does seem to be a list of well known financial institutions that are willing to let there customers connect to the service including Schwab, Fidelity, Chase, Robinhood, American Express, and Capital One. Apparently there are over 12,000.

Quoting from the TechCrunch article:

With the new financial tool integration, users can get detailed answers to questions such as “I feel like I’ve been spending more recently. Has anything changed?” or “Help me build a plan to be ready to buy a house in my area in the next 5 years.”

Tell me you didn’t read that and immediately think that the minute a user enters that prompt they will immediately start receiving offers from those 12,000 financial institutions. That’s where this is headed. And as far as the history of the Internet is concerned, AI or not, that’s what it’s all turned into.

The reality is that just like with the health data that OpenAI also wants, whether users turn this type of info over or not, the data is going to be delivered to some data center at some point. Don’t think the three credit bureaus aren’t just waiting for the right offer to turn over your data, much the same way insurance companies are with your health data. Users donating their data will just provide another point of triangulation, and a more direct access to their inboxes.

If you ask me, this is just another exercise taking advantage of human curiosity and gullibility and turning that into more vectors to sell, sell, sell.

If those willing to head out into this new frontier of finance are willing to take that gamble, I say go for it. Let us know what you find.

My hunch it won’t be anything new.

(Image from OpenAI)

The Promise No Tech CEO or Politician Will Ever Make

A promise not made is easier to avoid than a promise made

There’s an issue out there that could change the way people think about a nuisance we all increasingly live with. That issue is spam. Emails, texts, phone calls, you name it. We’re swarmed with it like with mosquitos at dusk. And every effort you hear a tech company make to try and make unwanted calls and messages less of a problem is essentially a sop, soon to be defeated. The bad guys are better at this game, and quite frankly, the good guys don’t really care.

Cans of Spam displayed in a grid by Hannes johnson mRgffV3Hc6c unsplash.

I’ve often said that any politician running for national office promising to end spam in all forms as we know it would instantly find a constituency. I still believe that.

Politicians won’t do it, because, hey, they are part of the spamming problem. Note that they’ve exempted themselves from any soft shelled regulations they’ve legislated in the past.

These days, Tech CEOs also have an opening they’ll never take advantage of it. Not that they don’t care the way politicians don’t, but spam is good for their business. Take the AI push and the reactions to it. The folks pushing Artificial Intelligence are worried about a backlash spoiling their game from consumers, corporations, and maybe a government or two. And that backlash appears to be growing.

Who knew that if the sales pitch was AI would take your job, some would be unhappy?

Who knew that if your CEO discovered that they weren’t wracking up bottom line savings by dismissing the workforce that they’d be a bit peeved?

Who knew in what AI-induced downsizing law firms that feeding legal advice or sensitive information into an AI chatbot removed attorney client privilege?

Who knew that folks watching in plain sight as local politicians took cash to push through new data center construction that would increase their utility bills that folks would shockingly rise up in anger?

Who knew that employees of AI companies would be so concerned about how governments might use AI for surveillance and war fighting that they would petition their CEOs to stop government contracts?

Who knew that governments, that at one point were fat and happy to let AI run its race given all the cash lobbyists were stuffing in their pockets, would discover that perhaps these robots could possibly indeed bring chaos to things like financial systems and just about anything else?

Who knew that in order to keep AI chatbots from hallucinating, the user has to tell the AI chatbot not to hallucinate? It’s like telling your kid or a politician not to lie and expecting that to happen.

Here’s a small hint. Everybody knew. Everybody knows. It sounds like for the most part the chumps are catching on.

While there are spheres where AI might actually be of benefit to society AI might not get that chance unencumbered. So far on a consumer level its time saving and life altering benefits seem to have boiled down to sorting through emails and calendars, creating nonconsensual porn, making music and podcasts that nobody wants, dishing out bad therapy advice, and creating conversational partners for those who can’t converse with others in real life.

Essentially the same promises that computer technology has always promised. Only this time around the wheel it’s becoming exponentially easier to collect data from anyone using the computers. And that’s the end game.

Even with this growing backlash, tech CEOs aren’t going to make a promise to use this new super intelligence that can schedule a flower delivery, or spit out your calendar, to derail the possibility of them controlling that game. It is funny though that no one seems to have created a chatbot or LLM that can solve PR problems.

I don’t pretend to understand all of the technological ins and outs of chatbots, LLMs, MCPs, and other terms that seem to change each time a new version comes out or something goes wrong. I do suspect that the technology they are promising could fix the spam problem if that was the desire. In the same way, politicians could do so with regulation.

There’s a part of me that thinks these are actually political promises with technological problems that could actually be solved, or at least ameliorated. But promises not made are easier to deal with than keeping promises made.

There’s money to be made, and plenty of suckers willing to pony up. So why upset the game by pandering to sentiment?

(Image from Hannes Johnson on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

It’s all a loop

Back from spending time with the grandkids and back for some Sunday Morning Reading. There’s an interesting context to the many issues we face that evolves while watching the little ones grow and learn. Things are happening that will affect their lives in the years ahead. Yet there’s a blissful innocence cocooning them from it all. At the moment.

In my reading, and in my sharing of that reading, I find I’m doing so mostly for the thousands of tomorrows they have in their future, much more so than for anything that will happen in this week’s tomorrows that might affect me in the moment. Read on.

Neil Steinberg’s Meet My Metaphors #5: ConAgra is about so much more than the agricultural giant moving to Chicago years ago. If you like metaphors, it’s a must read. If you’re approaching the last leg of the journey, it’s a must read. If you’re concerned about what you may leave behind, well, it’s a must read.

JA Westenberg posits that it’s all a loop. Joke’s on us, I guess. Check out The Loop: Everything Has Happened Before, And Everything Will Happen Again.

Ky Decker wonders, Do I Belong In Tech Anymore? I find if you’re asking that question about anything, you already know the answer.

Wesley Hilliard thinks we should Stop With The Tech Celebrity Worship. I concur. AND I’m for knocking down all the pedestals we erect for celebrities to ascend in any and all fields of human endeavor.

Timothy Noah takes a look at How The Tech World Turned Evil. Pop the bubbles. Tear down the pedestals. Endless loops.

Meanwhile, Makena Kelly examines how Palantir Employees Are Talking About The Company’s Descent Into Fascism.

Follow that up with Jasmine Sun’s piece, Silicon Valley Is Bracing For A Permanent Underclass.

The previous four links speak to a much darker future in one way or the other. Read them. Then go back and re-read the first two links by Steinberg and Westenberg. Looping context.

Closing out this week, here’s a couple of links that feel a bit more uplifting. First up, check out Mat Duggan’s Boy Was I Wrong About the Fediverse.

Then follow that up with David Todd McCarty’s Becoming A Local. Sometimes the horizon is much closer than you think.