The AI Revolution is fueled by equal amounts of hype and fear. (I asked Gemini to illustrate ChatGPT controlling your job and this is what it came up with.) They have the same root, the idea that computers will take away your job. The hypesters say this like it’s a good thing. The rest of […]
An American suburb is a one-story affair. It grows into a city that way. People will “drive until they qualify,” until they reach some unspecified limit of time and distance. At that point people, or more likely their kids, will seek jobs further from the center of town, or will move into town. (The picture […]
Despite its continuing failures, AI nonsense just keeps getting louder. The latest bit of nonsense is a bet between AI skeptic Gary Marcus and AI advocate Miles Brundage.. Brundage thinks AI will become creative by the end of 2027. He thinks AI will be able to write a coherent legal brief, a Pulitzer-quality book, an […]
I enjoy my e-bike, but I know 2024 was just one point in time, and that change is coming. In the car-bike debate, that’s not always recognized. Advocates treat cars and bikes as a binary choice. But in the electric age we are now entering they aren’t, and they won’t be. How you get around […]
Debates about cities revolve around three prepositions, which have developed into two propositions. The prepositions are to, through, and around. These describe the three aims of transport. We are going to a place, through a place, or around a place. Before the 20th century, we went in and went out, and going around was unusual. […]
In two years, America went from being the leading economic power in the world to the dominant one, all thanks to AI. AI, the training of databases to deliver freeform answers to freeform questions, in a variety of formats, launched a boom in demand for computing resources. This created an infrastructure shortage that may take […]
The computer revolution, unlike previous eras in technology, didn’t change our physical world. When people during World War II imagined the world of 50 years previous (and Hollywood films of the time show you that many did), it was the physical changes that stood out. The entire infrastructure of American life was designed in their […]
Almost as soon as last month’s political disaster was clear, I identified the cause. I also wrote about what must be done next. (Image courtesy of Google’s Gemini.) A cloud, by itself, is not competitive in an AI world. You can’t just have data on your supporters and polls of the public. A party must data […]
Gary Marcus and other deep thinkers are suddenly shocked that “Artificial Intelligence” lies. They’re even said to be “scheming.” This should surprise no one. But let’s see if it can be explained in words of one syllable that geniuses might understand. First, computers aren’t human. They lack the context to tell truth from fiction. Their responses […]
After 46 years I have finally retired from daily news reporting. It’s been a great run. But when my last daily outlet, InvestorPlace, closed in September, I realized I don’t need it anymore. I can do what I want. The problem is that writers retire to pine boxes. Writing is all I ever wanted to […]
