Things You Want to Do
Now that you don't have to do the thing — what do you actually want to do? The closing post of the What's Left series.
Blog
The Music Is Still Playing
The AI bubble has specific predecessors: dark fiber, Pets.com, Enron's accounting, CDO tranching. The technology is real. The business models layered on top are familiar.
Is It Cruel to Be Rude to ChatGPT?
Sentience requires a limbic system. Consciousness requires sentience. Current AI has neither. The NPC test shows what that costs it.
What Your Career Is Missing Because You Never Asked
Every expert has fundamentals they forgot or never properly learned. The reason those gaps survive a whole career is that asking has always cost something — and in one place it no longer does.
There Is No Kung Fu Download
AI can generate perfect Spanish content all day. It cannot acquire Spanish on my behalf. The brain's work turns out to be the irreducible part.
The Heat Sink
Three anaidic shapes — the individual, the corporation, the LLM. Each routes accountability to nowhere. The pattern is old. The word is new.
A 19-Year-Old Grows Human Brains in a Dish. Here's What They Say About AI.
A young scientist grows human mini-brains from skin cells — what organoids, a 302-neuron worm, and language models reveal about the spectrum of intelligence.
Can You Explain Your Idea to a 5-Year-Old?
Halfway through a long session, stop and ask for the five-year-old version. You find out whether you are still working on the same problem — and whether the reasoning underneath survives being said in short words.
More Famous Than the Pope
GTE spent billions building distribution. Now distribution is free, and the only scarce resource left is attention. This is not obviously good news.
Sir
How you configure your AI assistant — what you make it call you — says nothing about the AI. It's a bumper sticker. You're the truck owner.