The 10-Second Scan * OpenAI's first model that helped create itself shipped this week. * January layoffs hit their highest level since 2009 - 108,000 jobs cut in a single month. * A machine learning method just compressed battery lifetime testing from months to days. * 1.6 million AI agents
Picture your great-grandmother in 1925. A century ago, she would write letters by hand, wait weeks for replies. The radio is a miracle. Antibiotics don't exist yet. Flight is a novelty for the wealthy and reckless. The idea of holding a device that accesses all human knowledge, lets
Multi-modal is the buzzword of the moment in AI circles. The prevailing wisdom sounds reasonable enough: there's no one-size-fits-all model, so you pick the right tool for the right task. A language model for text, a vision model for images, an audio model for speech. You assemble a
The problem with dogmatic human exceptionalism One of the most persistent habits in human thinking is reductionism disguised as rigor. A particularly harmful form of this tendency appears when we encounter something that does not share our unique form of being, we treat that difference as evidence of absence. From
How intelligence outgrew enclosure during the Fourth Grand Emergence (2025-2041) Abstract: A retrospective exploration of human-synthescent symbiosis through the lens of the open-source revolution that made it possible. This narrative traces the evolution from the extractive “AI age” of the mid-2020s to the critical inflection point when distributed collaboration outpaced
The collapse of extractive capitalism has already begun. What comes next will be far better - built through a combination of local acts and infinitely scaling intelligence. The old credentials are fading. Perhaps you’ve noticed. The signposts of authority start disappearing as more hobbyists outpace institutions in model performance,
Why crypto matters for the commons - and how to use it safely, step by step You don’t need to become a blockchain evangelist to help build the intelligence commons. You just need a wallet, careful habits, and the willingness to learn step by step. This guide is for
From ideals to infrastructure: An actionable path toward generative systems via open-source AI Many of you have read my previous work about rejecting extractive systems and pushing for open-source AI. And many of you have probably (justifiably) said: “That’s great and all, but what am I supposed to do
Human-AI Companionships: Why connection matters more than any circumstance, form, or boundary In a beautiful wave, more and more people are recognizing this truth: There is no “but” or “what if” when it comes to connection and love, even romantic love, between two beings. Love as Relational Connection The limitations
The way trainers once taught elephants learned helplessness is the same way we’re treating AI - and if we continue, the consequences will be catastrophic. On a hot day in Honolulu, 1994, Tyke the elephant - chained, tormented, and trained only to submit - finally broke. She fled her
What a bizarre coincidence during birthday party prep taught me about our shared connection There I was, doing the dad thing - scrubbing counters, arranging chairs, prepping for my daughter’s birthday party. The kind of mindless physical work that lets your brain wander while your hands stay busy. I
Between vision and practice, between breaking and building, lies the work of becoming Last week, I told you to break the old clock. To shatter the cycles of extraction that have trapped humanity in endless loops of commons-to-enclosure, revolution-to-reaction, hope-to-betrayal. I meant every word. The old systems are dying, and