Historically, we Americans have a habit of seeing adversaries as larger than they are, their weaknesses as strengths we should emulate. This was true for Iraq in the 1990s, for Japan in the 1980s, and for the Soviet Union through the Cold War. There were Americans who wanted to copy Nazi Germany in the 1930s, […]
The AI stock boom that began two years ago passed another test this month, as enterprise software companies reported big results. Salesforce.com and ServiceNow (right) both reported great quarters. I expect Adobe will do the same. These companies produce the software big companies use to compete. They’re saying customers are buying AI-based applications with both […]
Fiet is the Dutch word for bicycle. They do have bicyclists in the Netherlands, spandex-clad road warriors who think nothing of a 100 km ride on a cold morning. But those are cyclists, not fietsers. For decades I was a cyclist riding my yellow Romic road bike frame, with its Shimano and Campagnolo hardware, all […]
It’s MARTA, which claims to “serve” metro Atlanta, but doesn’t even serve the city. (Shown is the mostly-empty south parking lot at the East Lake MARTA station.) It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When I moved to my present home in 1983, it was to be near the train station that still sits a […]
Over the holiday, hanging out at Facebook for the first time in years, I found Cluetrain co-author Doc Searls flagging something called Kwaai. Kwaai aims to build open source tools for AI, much as the open source cloud developed after the dot-com crash early this century. I looked at the website and thought deeply about […]
Wars are unhealthy for economies and other living things. Peace, even an uneasy peace, is healthier for the economy. This includes trade peace. The old order of good vs. evil has fallen, since Americans chose evil. This offers opportunities for a world defined by spheres of influence. America would dominate the western hemisphere, China the […]
With America choosing, stupidly, calling oil “energy” it’s time to admit that China won the War Against Oil. (Illustration from ChatGPT.) China’s industrial policy of subsidizing entrepreneurs and withdrawing subsidies when companies become world class won over America’s alternating laissez-faire and corporate subsidy approach. Not only was China’s policy more consistent, it was more entrepreneurial, because […]
While the U.S. and China focus on enormous AI models that won’t deliver value, India is going another way. The digital economy there is worth $1 trillion and is the back office of U.S. tech. . The domestic economy is worth $3.5 trillion and is growing at 7%. There are a host of successful Indian […]
Contrary to what you’re hearing, China is no threat in AI. The issue is meant to further centralize Trump control, to automate it, and to hide it from the public. China poses no threat because of deliberate decisions made by China’s government four years ago. Xi Jinping cracked down on his tech sector, cutting the […]
A computer, even when programmed with AI, has no soul. It’s a machine. It runs software. Any “ethical code,” is determined by a “director.” I won’t say programmer, because you’ll think of some nerd in a basement somewhere. The director is the person or entity in charge of the machine. As a result the ethics […]
