Tech – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Dear Algo Shenanigans

The joke has always been on us.

I’m looking for someone to tell me I’m wrong here. Then we’ll laugh together. At the moment I’m laughing alone at what I believe is a masquerade that’s hiding the ball while promising social media users new capabilities.

According to reports, Threads, Instagram, and TikTok are offering ways for users to tune their own algorithms, providing better control over what they see in their feeds.

That’s the masquerade. I’m sure users will have a ball jumping at the chance to fine tune their feeds. That may indeed prove beneficial, but the way I see it this is just a way for Meta (Threads and Instagram) and TikTok to fine tune user preferences for better and more specific data collection and targeting.

I love this quote from the TechCrunch article:

The shift reflects an evolution in how recommendation systems work. Social media feeds are moving away from a one-size-fits-all TV channel and toward something more like a streaming service, where users can tune recommendations to their interests and have more control over what they see.

Like that works so well on streaming media services.

The “Dear Algo” posts, which I’ve seen on Threads for a while now, may send a signal saying none of, or more of this or that, but a signal is a signal that throngs of users will think they control, but it’s serving the companies more than it ever will the users. It’s the same game as before. The house always wins.

Go ahead, call me crazy. But bad things get masked behind supposedly good things all the time. Oldest trick in a very thick book of tricks.

Looking at the big picture and speculating further one could argue that this is a tacit admission that these tech companies have discovered better, perhaps or perhaps not more efficient ways to capture data than their algorithms ever provided. I’m guessing AI has something to do with it.

Actually, I’m not guessing.

(Image from the author)

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

Apple Announces New OS’s. I’m Still In Wait And See Mode

Apple works to make good on Apple Intelligence with Siri AI

At WWDC 26 Apple today announced new operating systems all ending in OS27. (The numbering thing drives me nuts.) The entire keynote felt different to me from recent years. I’m not talking about the presentation organization that strayed from the usual by device format. Rather it felt like Apple felt a bit humbled. Almost as if Apple is in a we’re in a thinking different mode these days. I may be reading more into that than is real, but I’m usually pretty good at sniffing these things out.

Apple announces Siri AI and its next generation of Apple Intelligence.jpg.

Apple chose the name Golden Gate for its macOS 27 version this year, and it looks like the folks in Cupertino heard the criticisms about Liquid Glass and have taken some steps to correct what I and many other consider design flaws. I’ve seen as many negative as positive reactions to the design changes, so we’ll see how that goes throughout the summer.

There was also quite a bit of time devoted to Parental Controls. Given the political heat big tech in general is taking politically here in the US and elsewhere that’s probably a smart move. The announcement stirred up a bit of controversy from folks not in favor of efforts like age verification. The devil will be in the details.

The big push though is all about Apple Intelligence and the New Siri, now called Siri AI. Trying to play catch up and recover from the mistakes of two years ago, Apple showed off some live demos in a separate meeting from the keynote. You can read about that on The Verge. So you have to consider showing live demos a plus over two years ago, although it was still in a protected environment. I’ll be looking for users to do the same as the betas roll out, even if it appears that there’s a waiting list for the New Siri. So, we’ll see how that goes.

Note that Siri AI, announced to roll out this fall, will be delayed in the European Union and China.

The announcements were solid. They appeared to address past problems of Apple’s own making, user complaints about recent design changes, and the promise of under the hood bug busting. Announcing speed increases across the platforms is promising. But we’ve been here before. Every keynote from every company makes promises. The devil is always in the details, and when life is a beta, you never know what’s final and when. Especially when you’re in a mode of trying to rebuild trust.

You can check out the entire keynote reduced to 26 minutes, also from The Verge here. And Jonny Evans has a nice collection of the headline announcements from the keynote here.

And this Mastodon post from Dwight Silverman sums up my some of my early thoughts as well.

To further sum it up my early thoughts, I’ll just say this. It’s going to be an interesting summer watching folks hammer on the betas, the first of what was released to developers today. The public betas will roll out in July. But we’ll have some early indications later in the week as developers begin working with the betas.

So, I’m still in wait and see mode. As should most of us be.

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.

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)