What's on your mind lately?

A paragraph from Frank Herbert's Dune: "Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

Incredibly prescient. Seems very likely to me that we will not get betrayed by some awakened super-AI going rogue. We will get betrayed by power-mad techno barons or totalitarian governments who are using AI to achieve their ends. Probably by both.

What's one fact about AI that everyone should know?

That generative AI will turn out to be a huge disappointment. We are building something that, by definition, generates more stuff: more articles, more videos, more presentations, more meeting minutes.

But every knowledge worker will tell you that they need less stuff, not more. I also don't see a market in media for all this extra content. We are already close to market saturation. Who is going to consume all this stuff?

So in the long-term, generative AI is both functionally and economically unfeasible. It would be better if we pointed this technology at physics or medicine.

What's a good hobby?

Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop role-playing game. It’s a completely analog way to spend quality time with your friends. It lets you create a unique shared story that isn't being streamed, recorded, or podcasted. It is there just for you, only once, at a specific moment in time. In our performative copycat world, that is an incredibly precious thing.