AI Trends, Jan 6 Merch
In a nod to how often people are looking for AI answers instead of search results, Google is testing a feature that replaces its “I’m feeling lucky” button with an AI mode button. One can imagine the traditional search button also eventually being replaced by an AI mode button, then all buttons being replaced by AI buttons, until ultimately, buttons themselves will be replaced. (Don’t feel too bad for buttons, you’ll probably be replaced before them.) Let’s catch up on some AI trends, the good, the bad, and the ugh-ly, starting with education. We already know that students are using AI like crazy. Well, so are professors. Which begs the question (that one might want to ask ChatGPT) of how much tuition one should be paying for AI lessons. NYT (Gift Article): The Professors Are Using ChatGPT, and Some Students Aren’t Happy About It. “Oh, how the tables have turned. Now students are complaining on sites like Rate My Professors about their instructors’ overreliance on A.I. and scrutinizing course materials for words ChatGPT tends to overuse, like ‘crucial’ and ‘delve.’ In addition to calling out hypocrisy, they make a financial argument: They are paying, often quite a lot, to be taught by humans, not an algorithm that they, too, could consult for free.”
+ One of the most promising areas for AI is health. One reason for that is because our current health system is so disjointed. WSJ (Gift Article): “A neurologist focused on my head pain but not my diet; a gastroenterologist examined gut inflammation and ignored my migraines; an ear, nose and throat doctor probed sinus inflammation, missing other factors. Each offered partial help, but no one connected all the dots … That’s precisely where AI excelled.” AI Helped Heal My Chronic Pain. (When I entered my symptoms into AI, it suggested my chronic pain could be coming from sitting at my computer talking to AI all day…)
+ For companies and governments, it’s not personal, it’s strictly business. But consumers are encouraged to make it very personal. And that’s tricky business.
The Verge: AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state. “We’re watching the impending collision of two alarming trends. In one, tech executives are encouraging people to reveal ever more intimate details to AI tools, soliciting things users wouldn’t put on social media and may not even tell their closest friends. In the other, the government is obsessed with obtaining a nearly unprecedented level of surveillance and control over residents’ minds: their gender identities, their possible neurodivergence, their opinions on racism and genocide.”
+ Whether AI is a benefit or a cost depends largely on who’s deploying it. Increasingly, that includes anyone with a big enough bank account. A Saudi AI opportunity worth $1 trillion wins over Wall Street. “Under the deal, Nvidia will sell 18,000 next-gen Blackwell chips to power the Kingdom’s first supercomputer … Days before the trip, the U.S. Commerce Department rescinded the Biden-era AI Diffusion Rule, a sweeping framework that would have imposed tiered export controls across dozens of countries.”
+ Meanwhile, in the AI trenches, no one is slowing down long enough to worry about any of this stuff. The race to change everything is on. The Atlantic (Gift Article): Silicon Valley Braces for Chaos. “Sure, tariffs are stupid. Yes, democracy may be under threat. But: What matters far more is artificial general intelligence, or AGI, vaguely understood as software able to perform most human labor that can be done from a computer.”
Laying Down the Law
“The rule-of-law casualties of these presidentially provoked national crises are mounting by the day. America cannot withstand three-and-a-half more years of this president if his first few months are a harbinger of what lies ahead.” J. Michael Luttig with a very clear (if depressing) overview of what’s gone down so far in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The End of Rule of Law in America. “After these first three tyrannical, lawless months of this presidency, surely Americans can understand now that Donald Trump is going to continue to decimate America for the next three-plus years. He will continue his assault on America, its democracy, and rule of law until the American people finally rise up and say, ‘No more.'”
+ The big question is whether people will rise up and say “No more.” What really bothers me is people who are encouraging Americans to rise up while leaving America. Did Paul Revere warn that “the British are coming!” while riding his horse into Canada? NYT (Gift Article): “Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley, all professors at Yale and experts in authoritarianism, explain why America is especially vulnerable to a democratic backsliding — and why they are leaving the United States to take up positions at the University of Toronto.” (There have been many stories about these departures. These folks may be willing to abandon America, but there definitely standing steadfastly behind their determination to make headlines.)
Research and Destroy
“In 2024, the United States spent nearly $1 trillion — roughly 3.5 percent of total economic output — on research and development. When it came to the kind of long-term basic research that underpins American technological and scientific advancements, the government accounted for about 40 percent of the spending. That’s the reason political, education and business leaders in advanced countries and emerging economies have long fretted over a brain drain from their own shores. Now they are seizing a chance to reverse the flow. ‘This is a once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity.'” NYT (Gift Article): The World Is Wooing U.S. Researchers Shunned by Trump. (Don’t worry. We can all do our own research.)
The Shirt Hits the Fan
“Absolved by President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons and feeling vindicated by his reelection, rioters who once lay low in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol or otherwise felt unwelcome on mainstream platforms are taking on new identities as online influencers.” A headline for the ages from WaPo (Gift Article): They stormed the Capitol. Now they’re selling merch. (My fellow Americans went to the insurrection and all I got was this lousy t-shirt…)
Extra, Extra
Losing Our Marble: “You look at this, it’s so beautiful. As a construction person, I’m seeing perfect marble. This is what they call perfecto.” Trump marvels at wealth of his Arab hosts while he eyes White House and Air Force One upgrades. Trump met with Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh (“attractive guy, tough guy”) and moved toward normalizing relations. He also announced Qatar’s plan to purchase a lot of jets from Boeing. Here’s the latest from BBC.
+ Hey BS Corpus: US Homeland Security secretary says requirements have been met to suspend habeas corpus. (Editor’s note: They haven’t.)
+ Inside Jobs: “If the administration were serious about countering antisemitism, first and foremost they wouldn’t be appointing people with antisemitic and other extremist ties to senior roles within the administration.” NPR: Multiple Trump White House officials have ties to antisemitic extremists.
+ Beach Body Politic: The New Yorker: How an Election Denier Became the U.S. Treasurer. “Brandon Beach was a state senator in Georgia who got involved in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Now his name will be on our money.” (This one is crazy even by our current standards.) Related: Oklahoma education standards say students must identify 2020 election ‘discrepancies‘.
+ More Tales From the Crypto: “GD Culture Group, a publicly traded firm with a Chinese subsidiary, has only eight employees, its public filings show, and recorded zero revenue last year from an e-commerce business it operates on TikTok.” Tiny Company With China Ties Announces Big Purchase of Trump Cryptocurrency. (Seems kosher…)
+ Narco Dependent: Here’s a headline that doesn’t quite match the administration’s public stance on the southern border. Mexican security chief confirms cartel family members entered US in a deal with Trump administration.
+ Meat Up: “Understanding how the sausage is made will come in handy: The actual production of Chomps (not their distribution or marketing or anything else) is the company’s No. 1 priority in the next few years. It churns out 2 million of the individually wrapped sticks a day on average, but that’s not even close to fulfilling the demand from US consumers currently obsessed with on-the-go protein.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Two Million Meat Sticks a Day Isn’t Enough for Chomps’ CEO. (In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have searched Meat Stick on the internet…)
Bottom of the News
You knew it was crazy to abandon the incredibly strong HBO brand for the name Max. I knew it was crazy to abandon the incredibly strong HBO brand for the name Max. And now Warner Bros knows it, too. They’re just giving up and calling it HBO Max again.
+ After just a few days in his new role, the Pope welcomed a sinner into the Vatican. Janik Sinner.
