A Chatbot Is Everything We Wrote Down, Lies Included
A language model is a tool that extends reasoning, built from a record that never marked its lies. Using it takes the oldest skills of a reader: reading, thinking, and weighing a story.
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Does It Make Me Money or Does It Make Me Happy?
If you are an expert, the work you love is less likely to pay than it was. The hours still matter, so the economy has to pay for them: apprenticeships, an income floor and a citizens' fund like Norway's. Singapore's prime minister is already worried about the broken bottom rung.
A Model of the Thing Is Not the Thing
Ford sculpts its cars in clay, draws them in CAD, and hired about 300 veterans to retrain its AI. All three are models, and a model of the thing is not the thing.
A Stranger's LinkedIn Bio Sent Me to Hegel, and I'm Still Lost
A line in a stranger's bio sent me into a conversation about Hegel and Kant. The plain-English answer was accurate and I still couldn't follow it. The fix is the same one that teaches languages.
Your AI Can't Check Anything You Tell It. Here's How Guardrails Work
A model remembers nothing between sessions and cannot verify a word you say. The published rulebooks say more than the behavior does, and most workarounds are boring.
It's Okay to Lie to Claude, as Long as You Own the Result
A model cannot verify what you tell it, and its maker says the person who supplies false context carries at least part of the blame. The lie costs nothing. The output goes somewhere.
My AI Conceded Two Points and Changed Nothing
A concession that changes nothing costs the conceder nothing, and the cost lands on the person on the other side. A cautionary tale about faceless decisions, from a degree title to an immigration office.
Can Tokens Start an Apocalypse?
A stream of tokens is speech produced faster, and the rules belong where the words are wired to something. Then there is the apocalypse that is about money.
There's No Such Thing as "AI Ethics"
A large language model only ever produces text. Treating that text as a novel ethical category, rather than as speech, is where the argument goes wrong.
AI Could Have Done My Job in 1986
Four things to write down before you hand a job to an AI agent: what comes in, the rules, the action, and how you will check the work.