I started journaling in 2019. It's not that I love keeping a journal, exactly. It's more that I find my brain works better if I spend a little time dumping its contents onto paper every morning. This practice got me through 2020, an extremely difficult year, and I've kept it …
Read More »Here’s the Thing AI Just Can’t Do
A few months ago, I was called in at the last minute to participate in an onstage fireside chat at an Authors’ Guild event. (I’m on the nonprofit’s council, but of course I speak here only for myself.) Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger and I spent much of the session exploring …
Read More »AI Needs to Be Both Trusted and Trustworthy
In 2016, I wrote about an internet that affected the world in a direct, physical manner. It was connected to your smartphone. It had sensors like cameras and thermostats. It had actuators: thermostats, drones, autonomous cars. And it had smarts in the middle, using sensor data to figure out what …
Read More »Everyone Is a Luddite Now
The Luddites arrived on the streets of San Francisco much as they did in the English factories two centuries ago: under cover of darkness and with iconic weapons in hand. In this case, traffic cones. An enterprising activist had observed (or perhaps gotten an insider tip) that placing an object …
Read More »Generative AI Is Coming for Sales Execs’ Jobs—and They’re Celebrating
Wining and dining, wooing clients with creative offers, and cashing big bonuses provide the glamor to sales work. Drafting answers to hundreds of dull questions posed by a prospective customer’s request for proposals? That’s just drudgery. Mercifully for workers, after months of speculation about ChatGPT-style AI taking over white-collar work, …
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