Essays on software, AI, and the future of work
The claims that AI is learning to lie and scheme got so much hype that I went to check them, source by source. The picture came out in two halves: the one warning you cashes in on the scare, and the wolf, this time, is real. Verifying stops being a quirk and becomes the only defense left.
6 min readThe agent proposes; the system authorizes. The question is no longer how to keep the model from making mistakes, but what happens when it does — so we stop tracing the route and start setting the boundary. Intelligence can be probabilistic; authority can't.
7 min readWhen generating code is free, what's scarce isn't producing: it's being able to trust what's produced. Software is being industrialized, and its law is simple — a system's autonomy can only grow at the pace of its capacity to verify itself. But there's a debt in the fine print: who will teach the next generation to see the thread?
7 min readIntelligence has become water: cheap, infinite. But there's a thirst it doesn't slake. The machine thinks; we know. And that knowing cooked in the flesh —the eye, the ear, the palate, the hand, the gut— will be your best tool.
4 min readAI doesn't turn you into a programmer: it puts an infinitely cheap contractor in your hand. And in front of him you're not the bricklayer or the architect, you're the developer. What you get back is worth exactly what the two things you can't delegate are worth: knowing what to ask for, and knowing whether it stands up.
7 min readThe numbers are true. The mess is real. But I reckon I've seen this film before. The trade never solved its messes by throwing out whatever caused them. It solved them by banging out the next tool.
5 min readAI is the compiler of this era. So next time you hear someone ask who's going to maintain such a godawful mess, remember the Finn with the 386.
5 min readThere won't be less software. There'll be a flood. Demand isn't going to shrink: it's going to spill through every gap where, until yesterday, it wasn't worth writing a single line.
6 min readFor decades, companies have had to adapt to software far more than software has adapted to them. That's changing.
12 min readFor too long technology sold us efficiency. It's about time we demanded what it promised from the very first wheel.
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