AI

A diagram of a lawn showing areas adapted for different purposes.

AI Drift – Dehumanizing the Self

The Center for Humane Technology is working to popularize the term “AI drift,” describing a model’s tendency to degrade in performance over time. I’m not crazy about the term because I don’t think it clearly communicates the dangers that AI presents to people as they go about their daily lives. In my workplace I’m seeing…

Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy with a large computer in the background.

The Human Cost of Automation

It took about 50 years for the automation of elevators to eliminate the job of elevator operator. Once you can reach your floor with the simple push of a button, why would you pay someone just to push the buttons? The problem is that elevator operators delivered other services besides being sure the lift was…

Birmingham library, with curved walls of books organized by color

AI and the Library of Babel

Did Jorge Luis Borges foresee a future crafted by Artificial Intelligence? Hear me out. Two weeks ago we had a Google rep come to our workplace to demo some of Gemini’s agentic capabilities. She gave us links to some sales data, inventory stats, a code block, and a prompt. Everything was precooked, and I entered…

Two large frying pans , empty, on an industrial stovetop, with a smokey background.

Is AI Frying My Brain?

Correlation is not the same as causation, I get that. But the past week I felt positively wrung out, crumpled up, and stomped upon at the end of every workday. And every day was a full-court press to write four pages of user documentation by EOD, using Anthropic Claude as my research assistant. Are the…