Category: Behavior

  • Do We Already Think AIs Are Conscious?

    When an AI Agent wrote a hit piece about a human, the press paid attention. But they didn’t look at the user comments. Here’s what they missed. When it comes to AI, my writerly beat is how human behavior changes in the face of AI. While I am interested in existential questions around AI, I’m…

  • Wonder Moments

    When something makes you notice and appreciate the technological marvels that we all take for granted, pay attention. Last Wednesday, my first meeting was a Zoom with one person in Warsaw (6,000 miles away) and another in Palo Alto (a mere 350 miles away). I’m in Los Angeles visiting family. I have global meetings like…

  • Thought Flavors

    Different tools can unleash different kinds of thinking, including fountain pens (a recent interest). Lately, I’ve gotten into fountain pens. A couple years back, my friend Rob gave me a nice Pilot. Then, after they went to Paris on a long-delayed mother/daughter trip, Kathi and Helena brought back a Waterman for me. I had an…

  • Leaps of Faith (but not that kind)

    How can we escape closed-loop thinking? (Hint: it’s not logic.) La Profesora turned me onto a recent episode of Your Undivided Attention, a podcast by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin of The Center for Humane Technology. In “What Would It Take to Actually Trust Each Other? The Game Theory Dilemma,” Harris and Raskin talk with Professor…

  • Shakespeare and the Attacks on Venezuela

    Recent political events resemble a moment from “King Henry IV, Part Two.”  I am an apex nerd. My passions include science fiction, comic books, fountain pens (a fresh rabbit hole into which I’ve faaaaallen) and comedy. As a researcher, I examine how our behavior changes, and doesn’t change, in the face of new technologies, most…

  • The AI Lies We Tell Ourselves

    We have to get real about when human skills are better than AI… and if anybody cares. I’m reluctant to loan out nonfiction books because I fill my books with marginalia arguments with authors. I worry that if people read these marked up books they’ll think I’ve slipped a cog. The same worry overtakes me…

  • Face: The Final Frontier

    A decade after Google Glass, are smart glasses finally becoming a thing? Although we’ve all had our individual journeys with the internet, the journey of the internet itself has been one of increasing intimacy. At first, we had to go somewhere else to get online: to a lab somewhere at a business or university. Then…

  • Why Don’t We Have This Already?—Streaming

    In a new thread about technologies and services that should already exist, I ask why—with all the data streamers have about us—it’s so hard to find something to watch together? I have long worried that Amazon thinks I’m crazy. More precisely, I worry that Amazon thinks I suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder—a.k.a. the many faces…

  • Not-Safe-For-Work AI Deepfake Review

    I look at fake Pixar previews, allegedly “banned” dirty song recordings, and a disturbingly-convincing Star Trek blooper. How long can reality last?  Trigger Warning (yes, I said it): Humor is subjective and always at least a bit mean. Malice, as Lady Sneerwell says in Sheridan’s School for Scandal, is “the barb that makes wit stick.”* Also, anytime…

  • Am I Becoming an iPhone Recluse?

    I started experiencing profound relief every night when I powered down my smartphone. Why is that? Overture: What follows is an atypical piece from me. It’s a lightly-edited journal entry that explores territory adjacent to “My Quest to be Whelmed” from a month ago.  Soundtrack: I’ve never suggested music to have playing when reading one…