Chatbots don't help
from Why businesses lie about AI by Cory DoctorowThe part I have some actual daily experience about: "Businesses suck at documenting their processes."
Nico Appel
The part I have some actual daily experience about: "Businesses suck at documenting their processes."
Current AI is incredibly useful and powerful. It is also utterly and completely unusable for the regular knowledge worker.
I really wish I understood more of computer science, and also had some practical experience programming. It seems to be an intellectually fascinating field.
I am afraid this is purely performative. While I can't judge the exact technical limitations of the approach, Anthropic themselves are already pretty cautious on what to promise.
Well said, and unfortunately all too true.
I have to think about this regularly: what I can't fully wrap my head around is how people are not learning all sorts of things using LLMs. And that is setting aside every problem that comes with AI.
The genie trope doubles as a lesson in specification. AI delegation is an old problem with a new twist: unlimited wishes, no memory, and decomposition as the suddenly scarce skill.
All of this is true and that's why it's funny. The efficiencies that are currently possible and happening, which of course is the underlying punchline of the sketch, are mind-blowing.
If expert AI users still need to assemble clean little operating environments around frontier agents, what hope do we have for mass knowledge worker adoption?
The Atlantic’s AI crash argument, what still holds, and what has changed since October 2025.
The grifters and the hucksters and the influencers selling impossible things succeed because audiences reward certainty and punish doubt. They honor confidence and resist complication.
Agents will end up hurting large organizations more than high performing individuals or small orgs.
Not to sound gloomy or depressing, but I'm afraid that, realistically, the chances of this [^1] ending well are slim.
The asymmetric attraction of a pull-up bar, and the power of putting things in your environment that lure you into unstructured training.
Reflections on daily training habits for knowledge workers, inspired by Tyler Cowen -- reading, typing, language, conversations, and writing.
An open letter to LinkedIn about their misaligned engagement notifications and why pushing users to work for the platform is disrespectful.
A pizza place anecdote about why most people don't instinctively think about process -- and why some of us can't help it.
A short reflection on the underappreciated luxury of choosing to work with friends.
Having a clear plan exposes what's unexpected -- and unexpected events can be fortunate or frustrating.
Werner Herzog's case for reading, his Rogue Film School reading list, and the motivation to pick up more books.
Location-based reminders are great, but what if we could tie reminders to people -- triggered when we meet, call, or message them?
First experiences with networking events in 2019 -- the awkwardness, the business card conundrum, and the shift to digital connections.
Mapping personal story onto classic narrative structure -- what change must happen to resolve the story with a happy ending?
A linguistic deep dive into why the German language makes it impossible to 'make money' -- and how debt is literally the plural of guilt.
From a late-night Netflix movie to collecting Jack Reacher quotes about minimalism, luggage, and the definition of affluence.
Inspired by Nassim Taleb's via negativa -- why what we deliberately don't do may be more interesting than what we do.