I recently wrote about AI and productivity, and how data from the 2024 Accelerate State of DevOps Report shows that widespread AI adoption in the software industry is contributing to a real and meaningful decline in software delivery performance. Approximately 76% of developers use AI tools in daily tasks such as coding, debugging, and documentation.

It’s rare that a national news story surfaces right at my sweet spot of journalism, book publishing, and Chicago, but yesterday, May 20, was one such special day. On that day, it was discovered by a reader on BlueSky that the May 18 Sunday edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, one of the city’s two daily papers, had published a 64-page summer-themed insert titled “Heat Index” that appeared to have been largely generated by AI hallucination. A section on “summer reading” recommending fake books by real authors like Isabel Allende and Rebecca Makkai was what tipped astute readers off.

Earlier this week, it was discovered that the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer had both published an externally-produced "special supplement" that contained facts, experts, and book titles entirely made up by an AI chatbot. There's been a lot written about this (former Chicago Reader editor Martha Bayne's is the best), and I don't need to rehash it all. But the thing that is most disheartening to me is how at every step along the way, nobody cared.

Click “I agree” to continue. You didn’t click it, though. Or maybe you did? I don’t know, it doesn’t matter.

In my day to day life, I often forget how much advertising most of the people face every day: ads are delivered to home via mail unless forbidden; linear TV has so many ads constantly interrupting the shows; web is near unusable without an ad blocker; newspapers and magazines are full of ads too.

If you read about the current crop of “artificial intelligence” tools, you’ll eventually come across the word “hallucinate.” It’s used as a shorthand for any instance where the software just, like, makes stuff up: An error, a mistake, a factual misstep — a lie.

It depends on who you ask. But the current wave of generative AI has unpleasant side effects that are hard to ignore: large-scale copyright infringements, environmental impact and bias.

…Unless you want to fail all the WCAGs, create litigation risk, close off opportunities in Europe, engage in reputational harm, and oh yeah, throw up barriers to your customers and users.

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If you aren’t using this technology, then you are shooting yourself in the foot. There is no future where this technology is not dominant and relevant. If you are not using this, you will be unemployable. This technology solves every development problem we have had. I can teach you how with my $5000 course.

Quality software from independent makers is like quality food from the farmer’s market. A jar of handmade organic jam is not the same as mass-produced corn syrup-laden jam from the supermarket.

Stalwart is an all‑in‑one mail server built for JMAP, the ultra‑modern email standard we should be using but the tech industry is cowardly and hella slow to move. Anyhoo! I recently setup a new mail server with Stalwart because updating my aging Mail‑in‑a‑Box instance was unappealing and I wanna use cool new things like JMAP. Running a mail server is never simple but you're not here for simplicity, you're here to experience the future and benefit from my learnings.

The latest fad amongst tech CEOs is no longer "founder mode", or taking drugs that they would fire you for taking, or telling everybody to return to the office — it's demanding that all work be AI-first! This is a great idea if you think nobody at your company is great at what they do. It may otherwise be a suboptimal strategy. Let's dive in!

Since leaving 18F, I’ve spent much of the last month thinking about what’s next for me work-wise. And of course, I’ve been doing no small amount of doomscrolling. But amid all of that, I’ve been remembering how to treat my website like a worry stone. When things get too stressful I’ll spend some time sanding down a few rough edges in the redesign. A tightened-up header layout here, a little more spacing there — doing a bit of design doesn’t fix a single thing about the world, but it gives me a little space to breathe, and to get my feet back under me.

I’ve got a post-graduate certificate in artificial intelligence (AI). I’m also an author, and I believe writers and publishers should not use AI in publishing. So that’s why I was disturbed when a reviewer asked if I had used AI in writing my recent coming-of-age novel, Under the Gulf Coast Sun. But the reasons I oppose using AI are not the usual ones you hear.

After sharing Ed Zitron’s latest piece called “OpenAI Is A Systemic Risk To The Tech Industry” I got a few responses arguing in a similar way: People agree that “AI” and especially “generative AI” is a massive bubble that does not really make much sense – if you imply rational decision making. Training the models, building the data centers, inference, inflated wages, potential licence costs and the costs of damages … economically the whole sector doesn’t make too much sense (Sequioa Capital agrees). Sure some people believe that they’ll find the machine god in old 4Chan posts but I also would not consider that to be rational in any way, shape or form. The singularity is just a weird ersatz-religion for rationalist nerds confronted with their own mortality.