Sorting Words, Clustering Thoughts
We sort words without thinking. Machines can't. They learn to draw boundaries and find themes: spam or not, tickets by topic. Use labels when you need decisions and clusters when you need discovery. Start there. Patterns come first, meaning follows.
Inside the Clockwork of an AI’s Mind
Ask a question, get a fluent answer. Under the hood, no insight, just a fast loop picking the next token, guided by attention and a tiny memory. See the gears, not a ghost. When you learn the strings, you know when to trust it and when to steer.
Chopping Language, Weaving Meaning
Language models don’t read like we do. They slice text into tokens and map them to vectors. Meaning becomes pattern, not understanding. Learn the quirks of tokenization and embeddings to write tighter prompts, spot bias, and know what gets lost.
From Bag-of-Words to GPT
We moved from counting words to modeling meaning. LLMs write, code, and summarize, but they also hallucinate and echo bias. Use them as partners, not oracles. Keep your hand on the wheel. In a world where language is cheap, make your thinking rare.
The Lie of the All-Knowing Leader
I thought leadership meant having every answer. It was fear in disguise. Real leadership says I don't know, shares context, invites dissent, and builds teams that run without a hero. Be a host, not the bottleneck. Trade control for trust so resilience can grow.
The Algorithmic Throne and the Cacophony of Democracy
How our faith in perfect algorithms threatens real self-correction, and why democracy survives by making room for noise.
False Gods of Certainty
People have driven into lakes because a map app said “turn right.” New age, same craving for certainty. Tools help, but they are not holy. Keep humans in the loop. Doubt is a duty. Use the model, question the verdict, keep your hands on the wheel.
We Got the Speed We Begged For. Now We Hate the Results
AI isn’t soulless. It mirrors us. We asked for speed and got it, then blamed the tool when craft felt thin. The tool is not the skill. The driver is. Bring taste, patience, and judgment, and the work lives. Want meaning? Pay the price in effort. The rest is on us.
The Future is Agents
Autonomous AI agents that plan, reason, and act on their own
Second-System Syndrome in Software
Successful V1s tempt teams into bloated V2s. From Netscape 6 and Vista to Copland, Perl 6/Raku, PHP 6, Python 3, Angular 2, Evernote 10, Skype 2017, and Snapchat 2018—what changed, what broke (tech, product, org), and a checklist to dodge the second-system trap.
Vibe Coding Is the New Spaghetti Code
Vibe coding feels like magic: talk and code appears. But the first draft often hides spaghetti. Use it for prototypes, not production. Treat AI like a junior dev. Review, refactor, test, and own the architecture. Speed wins nothing if maintenance loses.
