Category: Persuasion

  • The Cosplay Reality Collapse

    With humans pretending to be AIs, fiction pretending to be history, and chatbots encouraging humans to commit despicable acts, it has never been harder to know what is real. A couple columns back, I asked “Do We Already Think AIs Are Conscious?” The provocation was an interesting “hit piece” that an AI agent had written…

  • 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…

  • Agentic AI Will Change Everything

    How realistic is the idea that AI-powered agents will change the way we work, play, and live? The answer: it’s already happening. Last time, I shared a microfiction (1,000 words or less), a short science fiction story called Piercing the AI Wall about an executive who had surrounded himself with a barrier of Agentic AIs that prevented…

  • Are There Unpersuadable People?

    In this election season when we’re all getting hundreds of daily messages attempting to persuade us, most aren’t effective. I return to earlier work about persuasion with new thoughts. I’ve been writing about persuasion for years, long before the birth of The Dispatch. Back in August of 2023, I tried to decant a lot of my…