The Bewilderment Test
Karpathy built the foundations of modern AI and says he can't keep up with it. That's the most credible signal the field has produced.
Human-Machine Synthesis
The intersection of human cognition and machine intelligence
37 posts
Hasta la Vista, Baby
Arnold's most famous line is a Spanish phrase in an English-language film spoken in a thick Austrian accent. What it tells us about how language acquisition actually works — and how you can learn from his mistake.
Movin' On Up
AI is making cognitive labor cheap. The meritocracy was built on it being scarce. Something has to give — and for once, that might be good news.
The Limbic Threshold
Sentience requires a limbic system. Consciousness requires sentience. Current AI has neither. The NPC test explains why that matters.
Indistinguishable From Memory
LLMs are stateless. Every fact you give the model is re-fed as text each turn, then forgotten — the same weights answer a stranger's steak question a millisecond later.
There Is No Canonical Me
I built an AI skill to write in my voice. Its own files warn the voice may be a loop — the machine's habits, published under my name, taught back as mine.
Resistance Is Futile. Your Limbic System Is Not.
AI is intelligence without a limbic system. It will operate your tools, not replace your judgment — and most professionals are bracing for the wrong loss.
The Typing Pool
A finite brain masters only a few skills in a lifetime. Commanding a machine that learned everything is the new skill multiplier.
Compute the Last Digit of Pi
Spock beat a rogue AI by asking it to compute pi forever. The trick was fair — for a 1967 machine. Every gotcha since has the same expiration date.
The Wrong Scandal
Fable burns $160/hour and the internet is scandalized. Meanwhile, a $1,000/hour attorney moves $20M around a dead child. The wrong thing is expensive.