The debate about AI’s effects has been running for three years and producing mostly heat. Not because the researchers are wrong. Because they are not studying the same thing. Here is the clearest version of what I mean. A major 2025 meta-analysis of 69 studies found that ChatGPT produces significant positive effects on academic performance,…
The first time I watched a large language model generate research output in forty seconds, I was not impressed by the quality. I was impressed by the volume, and by how quickly it could pivot when I changed the question. The results were plausible, competently organized, and largely superficial. What changed things was connecting to…
In my last post I argued that the AI debate runs simultaneously at five levels (task, person, organization, economy, civilization) and that no one has agreed on which level should have standing. The civilization level, where the hardest questions live and where costs tend to concentrate, keeps getting treated as decorative. Nobody is lying. Everyone…
Classic cartoon. Still so very true.
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in the midst of the French Revolution the revolting citizens led a priest, a drunkard and an engineer to the guillotine. They ask the priest if he wants to face up or down when he meets his fate. The priest says he would like to face up so he will…
