Essays
88 essays
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AI Robot Massage
WSJ: I Pitted an AI Robot Massage Against the Real Thing (July 7, 2025) The Aescape massage robot has significant limitations compared to the human equivalent (specifically in working on…
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Meta’s AI Spending Spree
After reorganizing its AI group in May, Meta has been on a free agent hiring spree. So much so that one intrepid developer created a little dashboard: Zuck's Haul. As…
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Joanna Stern on AI Energy Uses
Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal explores: How Much Energy Does Your AI Prompt Use? I Went to a Data Center to Find Out. Her findings are helpful but…
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IEEE Spectrum: Large Language Models Are Improving Exponentially
Recent report predicts a bright future for LLMs: That was a key motivation behind work at Model Evaluation & Threat Research (METR). The organization, based in Berkeley, Calif., “researches, develops, and…
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WSJ: CEOs Start Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: AI Will Wipe Out Jobs
Analysts have been seeing structural changes in the job market related to AI, and now CEOs are admitting it openly. Ford's CEO, Jim Farley, suggests that 50% of white-collar jobs…
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WSJ:How a Bold Plan to Ban State AI Laws Fell Apart—and Divided Trumpworld
As I noted last week, Congressional efforts to block state AI laws in the Big Beautiful Bill lost support and was ultimately dropped from the Senate bill by a close…
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Bad (Uses of) AI
From MIT Technology Review: People are using AI to ‘sit’ with them while they trip on psychedelics. "Some people believe chatbots like ChatGPT can provide an affordable alternative to in-person…
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Bad Questions & Answers
Ethan Mollick recently cited a paper that tripped up DeepSeek: Garbage in, garbage out. AI tools are still in their relative infancy, and it's not surprising that confusing queries would…
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Douthat: Conservatives Are Prisoners of Their Own Tax Cuts
As a parent of three, point number 2 on Douthat’s opinion piece resonates with me: Second (in the voice of a social conservative), the law doesn’t do enough for family and…
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AI Free Agency
From the Wall Street Journal: Mark Zuckerberg Announces New Meta ‘Superintelligence Labs’ Unit and a partial reorganization of Meta. Mark Zuckerberg announced a new “Superintelligence” division within Meta Platforms, officially organizing an…