Brussels’ Latest Destructive Project, Culling the Euro Area’s Banks, Hits a Snag
Jul. 22nd, 2025 10:45 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
naked_capitalism_feedThe governments of Italy and Spain are doing everything they can to obstruct EU-supported bank mergers from taking place within their borders.
Africa’s Minerals Are Being Bartered for Security: Why It’s a Bad Idea
Jul. 22nd, 2025 09:55 amnaked_capitalism_feedA minerals-for-security deal among the DRC, Rwanda and the US is as bad as the Ukraine "raw earths" security commitments.
naked_capitalism_feedAs safety nets shred, some Christian churches provide key services to the poor while others use the desperation to build political power
Good afternoon, everyone! It’s update time!
Jul. 21st, 2025 04:14 pmjl8_tumblr_feedGood afternoon, everyone! It’s update time!
I’m sorry I’ve not been as communicative as I had hoped to be during this brief hiatus. Truthfully, and I think I’ve mentioned this here not long ago, the progress on the next chapter is going significantly slower than anticipated, and frankly, I’ve been embarrassed to talk about it, so I’ve just…not been talking, and for that I apologize. To make things worse, virtually every panel is pretty spoiler-y, so I can’t even comfortably share process photos. It’s crummy.
As it stands, I’m about two panels shy from having the first two pages complete. For context, I would’ve guessed by this point I’d have 4-5 pages finished. Admittedly, there’ve been some external circumstances affecting my work schedule, but the truth is that these pages are simply a lot harder than I predicted they’d be.
That said, I’m planning to start posting JL8 again during the first week of August. I certainly won’t have nearly the buffer I hoped to build, but I told you all the hiatus would be about a month or so, and I want to stick to that. I’ll just do my best to get as much done in the interim as I’m able.
I’ll discuss this more in a separate post, as this is already pretty long, but I’ve also added a bunch of new sale items to my online store. If you have a few bucks to spare and see something you like, I could really use the assist. I’ll be shipping orders at the end of this week, so if you order now, the turnaround will be nice and speedy.
That covers it for today. Take care.
-Yale
Coffee Break: Trump Makes an Example Out of Paramount
Jul. 21st, 2025 06:00 pmnaked_capitalism_feedPresident Donald Trump has zeroed in on Paramount, the weakest of American media titans, to administer a lesson in sontaku, the Japanese art of "obeying in advance" or "following unspoken orders."
Life of Focus is now open for a new session
Jul. 21st, 2025 02:26 pmscott_h_young_feedLife of Focus, the three-month training program I co-instruct with Cal Newport (author of Deep Work), is now open for a new session. We will be holding registration until Friday, July 25th, 2025 (midnight, Pacific time).
This course aims to help you achieve greater levels of depth in your work and life. How would it feel to have more time and energy for the things that really matter to you?
We split the course into three, one-month challenges. Each challenge is a guided effort to help you establish and test new routines, alongside specific lessons to deal with issues you might face. Those challenges are:
- Month 1: Establishing deep work hours. We all know we could get a lot more done with less stress if we had more time for deep work, but actually achieving this regularly can be tricky. The first month focuses on finding and making the subtle changes you need to get in more deep work—without working overtime.
- Month 2: Conducting a digital declutter. Technology can be great, but it can also make us miserable. Having endless distraction within arm’s reach, it’s hard to engage in meaningful hobbies and have deeper interactions with our friends and family. This month helps you cultivate a more deliberate attitude to the digital tools in your personal life.
- Month 3: Taking on a deep project. In the final month, we’ll reinvest the time we’ve created at work and at home in a project that engages you in something meaningful. This can be learning something new or actually creating something instead of just passively consuming. Lessons will help you learn how to integrate deep hobbies into your busy life.
Life of Focus may be the most popular course we’ve run—and one in which students have reported some of the strongest results. This is because Life of Focus is action oriented—not just consuming information, but making sure you form lasting changes to your life.
Registration is open now. If you’re interested, click below. Registration is only open until Friday:
Click here to join
The post Life of Focus is now open for a new session appeared first on Scott H Young.
AI and Workers’ Wellbeing: Lessons from Germany’s Early Experience
Jul. 21st, 2025 01:55 pmnaked_capitalism_feedAn only mildly negative report on AI implementation from Germany, and why that is not likely to be generalizable to the US.
doctorow_feed
Today's links
- How my DRM-free principles left me owning the rights to a German audiobook: This isn't my usual crowdfunder!
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- Object permanence: Internet addiction, Dems fund DHS urban invasions, AI art and anti-cooption, FCC vs prison profiteers
- Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
How my DRM-free principles left me owning the rights to a German audiobook (permalink)
Long story short: thanks to a series of misunderstandings, I had to shell out more than ten thousand euros to prevent a German audiobook of my work from being released with DRM and now I need your help (assuming you speak German) to get the book into readers' ears!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-auf-deutsche-drm-freie
For more than a quarter-century, I've had an iron-clad policy of not releasing my work with "digital rights management," this being a kind of encryption that keeps my readers from reading the books they've bought in the apps of their choice.
There's two reasons for this: the first is, it's just grossly unfair. If you buy one of my print books, you can shelve it on any bookcase and read it sitting in any chair, under any company's lightbulb. It's stupid and offensive for a company like Amazon/Audible to declare that you can only read the ebooks and audiobooks you buy using the apps they approve.
But the second reason is more insidious and subtle. By retaining control over the apps that you must use to read or listen to your books, companies like Amazon are able to lock you into their platform. That means they can change the deal even after you've made your purchase (for example, Amazon has been caught deleting ebooks from people's Kindle apps and readers and Audible has experimented with inserting ads into your audiobooks after you buy them).
This lock-in isn't limited to readers, either. Once Amazon has all my readers locked in, the company acquires control over me, the writer. After all, if my readers can't switch from Amazon to another bookseller, then I can't switch from Amazon to another bookseller, because that would mean asking my readers to start over buying all their books again.
Amazon has a long history of squeezing its sellers – including writers and publishers – once it has them locked in. Today, 45-51% of every Amazon Marketplace purchase from an independent seller is skimmed off by Amazon in junk fees. The company makes $58 billion/year charging vendors for search placement (rather than putting the best match for shoppers' searches at the top of the result). And they stole at least $100m from Audible audiobook authors:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate
In 1998, the US passed a law (Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) that makes tampering with DRM a felony with a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine (for a first offense). In the years since, the US Trade Representative bullied every US trading partner into adopting this law. The EU did so in 2001, with Article 6 of the Copyright Directive.
This means that it's literally a crime for me, the author of a book, who holds the copyright to the work, to authorize you, a reader who bought the ebook or audiobook on Amazon, to convert the digital file so that it works with apps that compete with Amazon's.
So that's why I don't allow my work to be sold with DRM.
Everyone I do business with knows this – my publishers, my agents, etc – and over the past quarter century and more than 30 books, all of these people have bent over backwards to accommodate this policy of mine, even when it meant changing the workflow they used for thousands of books just to make an exception for me. I'm incredibly grateful for this.
But eventually, someone was bound to slip up, and that's how I ended up owning the German audiobook for my novel Red Team Blues.
After Red Team Blues was published in English in 2022 and became a national bestseller, many foreign publishers snapped up the translation rights. Among them was Heyne, my German publisher, who commissioned a fantastic translation by Jürgen Langowski that has sold briskly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Heyne also commissioned an audiobook, beautifully read by a beloved German audiobook narrator, Uve Teschner.
But somewhere in there, everyone forgot that this audiobook could only be sold without DRM. And since Audible, Apple Books and Audiobooks.com refuse to carry DRM-free books, that meant that they would not be able to sell the books in the places where 90+% of readers look for them.
No one is to blame here. It's just an oversight. But it left us all in the awkward position of my publisher having spent more than EUR10,000 on an audiobook that they would never be able to recoup on. Both my publisher and my agent offered to eat these costs, but I felt bad about this, given the great lengths both had gone to over the years to help me live my principles through my books.
Besides: I have this platform of mine, the newsletters and lists of people who've bought audiobooks from me before and the people who've backed the Kickstarters for my previous English works, and I decided I would buy the audiobook rights from my German publisher and try to make the money back by selling directly to my German fans.
Today, I've launched a Kickstarter campaign to sell the DRM-free German audiobook. I'm also selling the DRM-free ebook, and the German paperback, which will be fulfilled by my pals at Berlin's excellent sf/f bookstore Otherland (due to the Trump tariff nonsense, these can only be shipped in the EU, UK, and Switzerland):
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-auf-deutsche-drm-freie
There's something for English-speaking readers, too: discounted editions of the English-language ebook and audiobook (read by Wil Wheaton), available in bundles with the German titles, or on their own. Europeans can also order the print edition of the book (again, fulfilled by Otherland in Berlin).
Now, I don't actually speak German. I grew up speaking Yiddish, much of which I've forgotten, which means that I can kind of grunt out ungrammatical German-adjacent phrases (the Otherland folks generously translated my Kickstarter page into German). That means that I have extremely limited ability to promote this Kickstarter to German-speaking audiences. I'm really relying on my readers here: if you are a German-speaker and/or have German-speaking friends, please let them know about this!
When you do, your pals are going to ask you what the book is about. Red Team Blues tells the story of the last case of Martin Hench, a 67 year old high-tech forensic accountant who's spent 40 years in Silicon Valley, busting the weirdest financial scams that three generations of tech bros cooked up. For this final job, Marty's been called out of retirement to resolve that scammiest of all tech-bro schemes, a cryptocurrency heist.
Marty's dear old pal Danny Lazer has built a new – and wildly successful – kind of blockchain, built on the security chips in mobile devices, called Trustlesscoin. Lazer is a cypherpunk legend, but that's not why Trustlesscoin went from zero to more than a billion in capitalization in a few short months: all that money poured in because some of the world's most ruthless criminals came to appreciate how Danny's cryptocurrency could facilitate money-laundering.
That would be bad enough, but Danny is exactly the kind of very smart guy who is more than capable of outsmarting himself. That's how he came to build a cryptographic back-door into Trustlesscoin, a secret key that allows the bearer to rewrite the supposedly immutable transactions in the network, which is to say, to steal all the money.
That's where Marty Hench comes in: Danny summons Marty to his home in Palo Alto because someone has stolen the physical token that this billion-dollar key lives on, and if someone doesn't get it back soon, it's only a matter of time until a billion dollars goes missing, and then the kind of people who resolve their monetary disputes with bone-saws and red-hot pokers will come looking for Danny.
That's where the story starts – but it turns out that recovering Danny's missing keys are the easy part. The hard part comes next, when Marty finds himself in the crosshairs of the violent international crime syndicates that boosted the keys in the first place.
People really like this book. It's the kind of book you stay up all night reading (or, as Molly White from Web3 is Going Just Great put it, "don't start reading it at bedtime if you have to be awake for something the next morning"). If you find yourself craving morning Marty Hench in the morning, I've published two more bestsellers recounting his earlier adventures: The Bezzle and Picks and Shovels.
Check it out for yourself. Here's the first chapter of the German audiobook, read by Uve Teschner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8e2or8ze_4
And here's the first chapter of the English audiobook, read by Wil Wheaton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb8yJeASgho
The campaign only runs for a brisk three weeks (I've got to get it all put away before I head out on tour with Enshittification in October), so act fast:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-auf-deutsche-drm-freie
And please, tell your German-speaking friends!
Hey look at this (permalink)
- Everything Else https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/everything-else
-
UBC discourages its privacy impact assessments’ inclusion on hub created by former staffer https://ubyssey.ca/news/ubc-discourages-pia-hub/
-
Patient Care Technology Disruptions Associated With the CrowdStrike Outage https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2836824
-
Mark Zuckerberg Is Expanding His Secretive Hawaii Compound. Part of It Sits Atop a Burial Ground https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-secretive-hawaii-compound-burial-ground/
-
The Incredible Shrinking Trump Antitrust Enforcers https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-the-incredible
Object permanence (permalink)
#10yrsago What we talk about when we talk about “Internet addiction” https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/16/is-internet-addiction-a-health-threat-for-teenagers/blame-society-not-the-screen-time
#10yrsago Los Angeles is selling off some very odd lots, including a sidewalk corner https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-redevelopment-property-sale-20150718-story.html
#10yrsago Rare look at how big business defends “Investor State Dispute Settlements” https://www.techdirt.com/2015/07/20/eu-proposes-to-reform-corporate-sovereignty-slightly-us-think-tank-goes-into-panic-mode/
#5yrsago Dems vote to fund more DHS invasions of US cities https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/20/no-mask-no-service/#enablers
#5yrsago Grifters started the anti-mask movement https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/20/no-mask-no-service/#dorr-brothers
#5yrsago Michigan Supreme Court to review teenager's no-homework jail sentence https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/20/no-mask-no-service/#free-grace
#1yrago AI art has no anti-cooption immune system https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/20/ransom-note-force-field/#antilibraries
#1yrago FCC strikes a blow against prison profiteering https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/19/martha-wright-reed/#capitalists-hate-capitalism
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, Oct 8
https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825 -
New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/ -
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
Recent appearances (permalink)
- ORG at 20: In conversation with Maria Farrell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9H2An_D6io -
Why aren't we controlling our own tech? (Co-Op Congress)
https://www.youtube.com/live/GLrDwHgeCy4?si=NUWxPphk0FS_3g9J&t=4409 -
If We Had a Choice, Would We Invent Social Media Again? (The Agenda/TVO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJw38uIcmEw
Latest books (permalink)
-
- Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
- The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org).
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"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
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"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
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"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
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"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Upcoming books (permalink)
- Canny Valley: A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025
-
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ -
Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026
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Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
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The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026
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The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI, a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
- "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. (1014 words yesterday, 6133 words total).
-
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
ISSN: 3066-764X
Midwinter Gatherings
Jul. 21st, 2025 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipOn the weekend, I hosted a "Midwinter Day's Awakening", where once again I proved I can squeeze around 25 people into my apartment when dispersed over several hours. It has a cross between a "Christmas in July" southern-hemisphere provision of food and drink (lashings of mulled wine), and Elizabethan music (William Byrd, John Bull, John Bull et al), along with readings from Shakespeare, and the dulcet operatic tones of Angela L. (whose capacity to recite paragraphs from Shakespeare from memory is second to none). As featured attendees, the rodents Mayday and Mayhem were a big hit; "As I would serve a rat". But most of it was the outstanding company and wide-ranging, brilliant conversation that kept the event going from noon to the witching hour. As is often the case, I overcatered and now found myself in the enviable and challenging position of many delicacies. For example, what does one do with 1.5kg of Shropshire Blue cheese?
It was the second gathering of such nature recently as well; last week, I organised, through the Australia-China Friendship Society, a social dinner at Song's Dumplings, a glorious hidden gem in South Melbourne. Inexpensive, superb food in generous portions, and an amazing 1960s-style Chinese feature wall, the dinner was attended by a range of people from their 20s to their 80s. Everyone in the room was, of course, a bit of a worldly traveller, even the (relative) youngsters, and were able to discuss a variety of matters of Australia-China relations with great acumen, all whilst retaining a sharp sense of humour. I find it important that, with the exception of one person, the attendees of the ACFS dinner were completely different to the attendees of the Midwinter Day. I think it's important for a person's sanity to have diverse groups of friends - otherwise, you end up spending twenty years talking to the same people about the same things and wondering why you've ended up in an echo chamber.
As delightful as these two social occasions have been there is several other vectors in my life; Spanish studies for the impending trip, University teaching in supercomputing and researcher presentations, progress in my doctoral studies that cross climatological science and the psychology of denial, producer roles in the arts, poetry matters, and even some interesting news in the gaming hobby. Some of these will be raised in my next entry; I keep many irons in the fire of life, and most have been chosen well. But for now, gentle readers, I can only offer tantalising hints.
It was the second gathering of such nature recently as well; last week, I organised, through the Australia-China Friendship Society, a social dinner at Song's Dumplings, a glorious hidden gem in South Melbourne. Inexpensive, superb food in generous portions, and an amazing 1960s-style Chinese feature wall, the dinner was attended by a range of people from their 20s to their 80s. Everyone in the room was, of course, a bit of a worldly traveller, even the (relative) youngsters, and were able to discuss a variety of matters of Australia-China relations with great acumen, all whilst retaining a sharp sense of humour. I find it important that, with the exception of one person, the attendees of the ACFS dinner were completely different to the attendees of the Midwinter Day. I think it's important for a person's sanity to have diverse groups of friends - otherwise, you end up spending twenty years talking to the same people about the same things and wondering why you've ended up in an echo chamber.
As delightful as these two social occasions have been there is several other vectors in my life; Spanish studies for the impending trip, University teaching in supercomputing and researcher presentations, progress in my doctoral studies that cross climatological science and the psychology of denial, producer roles in the arts, poetry matters, and even some interesting news in the gaming hobby. Some of these will be raised in my next entry; I keep many irons in the fire of life, and most have been chosen well. But for now, gentle readers, I can only offer tantalising hints.
naked_capitalism_feedMoscow takes measures against Baku and Yerevan to warn against corridor move that would upset regional balance and be blow to Iran and Russia.
Can This Industry Be Saved? The Case of Natural Diamonds
Jul. 21st, 2025 09:00 amnaked_capitalism_feedThe once prized diamond is now merely a natural diamond and losing ground to its cheaper manufactured cousins.
naked_capitalism_feedIn her first six months, Donald Trump’s second agriculture secretary has altered the course of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She says prosperity is ‘just around the corner.’ But staffing cuts and restricted research could have long-lasting impacts.
Wolf Hall and the Liberal Stand-in
Jul. 21st, 2025 05:48 amfaustusnotes_feedI just finished reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which is an excellent book about one of UK history’s more influential non-regal people, Thomas Cromwell. Wolf Hall tells the story of his early rise to becoming Henry the 8th’s chief advisor, with lots of reflection on his childhood, his past in Europe and his religious beliefs. […]
BS/MD Personal Statement and Program-Specific Essays
Jul. 16th, 2025 03:43 pmmedschoolinsiders_feedAre you a high-achieving high school student who’s already certain that medicine is your calling? While the road to becoming a fully licensed physician is always lengthy, BS/MD programs offer a streamlined early admission pathway that combines your undergraduate and medical education, essentially creating a direct route from high school to medical school. These programs are designed for…
2026 ERAS Residency Application Changes
Jul. 7th, 2025 03:53 pmmedschoolinsiders_feedThe 2026 ERAS cycle is introducing significant changes to residency applications. For some applicants, this means more essays, while for others, it means changes in the signaling process. Ultimately, for current fourth-year medical students preparing for the match, this could mean adjusting your ERAS strategy to optimize your chances of matching at your dream program.
No One Knows Anything About AI
Jul. 20th, 2025 04:13 pmcal_newport_feedI want to present you with two narratives about AI. Both of them are about using this technology to automate computer programming, but they point toward two very different conclusions.
The first narrative notes that Large Language Models (LLMs) are exceptionally well-suited for coding because source code, at its core, is just very well-structured text, which is exactly what these models excel at generating. Because of this tight match between need and capability, the programming industry is serving as an economic sacrificial lamb, the first major sector to suffer a major AI-driven upheaval.
There has been no shortage of evidence to support these claims. Here are some examples, all from the last two months:
- Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of the AI company Perplexity, claims AI tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot cut task completion time for his engineers from “three or four days to one hour.” He now mandates every employee in his company to use them: “The speed at which you can fix bugs and ship to production is scary.”
- An article in Inc. confidently declared: “In the world of software engineering, AI has indeed changed everything.”
- Not surprisingly, these immense new capabilities are being blamed for dire disruptions. One article from an investment site featured an alarming headline: “Tech Sector Sees 64,000 Job Cuts This Year Due to AI Advancement.” No one is safe from such cuts. “Major companies like Microsoft have been at the forefront of these layoffs,” the article explains, “citing AI advancements as a primary factor.”
- My world of academic computer science hasn’t been spared either. A splashy Atlantic piece opens with a distressing claim: “The Computer Science-Bubble is Bursting,” which it largely blames on AI, a technology it describes as “ideally suited to replace the very type of person who built it.”
Given the confidence of these claims, you’d assume that computer programmers are rapidly going the way of the telegraph operator. But, if you read a different set of articles and quotes from this same period, a very different narrative emerges:
- The AI evaluation company METR recently released the results of a randomized control trial in which a group of experienced open-source software developers were sorted into two groups, one of which would use AI coding tools to complete a collection of tasks, and one of which would not. As the report summarizes: “Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower.”
- Meanwhile, other experienced engineers are beginning to push back on extreme claims about how AI will impact their industry. “Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw,” quipped the developer Simon Willison.
- Tech CEO Nick Khami reacted to the claim that AI tools will drastically reduce the number of employees required to build a software product as follows: “I feel like I’m being gaslit every time I read this, and I worry it makes folks early in their software development journey feel like it’s a bad time investment.”
- But what about Microsoft replacing all those employees with AI tools? A closer look reveals that this is not what happened. The company’s actual announcement clarified that cuts were spread across divisions (like gaming) to free up more funds to invest in AI initiatives—not because AI was replacing workers..
- What about the poor CS majors? Later in that same Atlantic article, an alternative explanation is floated. The tech sector has been contracting recently to correct for exuberant spending during the pandemic years. This soft market makes a difference: “enrollment in the computer-science major has historically fluctuated with the job market…[and] prior declines have always rebounded to enrollment levels higher than where they started.” (Personal history note: when I was studying computer science as an undergraduate in the early 2000s, I remember that there was consternation about the plummeting numbers of majors in the wake of the original dot-com bust.)
Here we can find two completely different takes on the same AI issue, depending on what articles you read and what experts you listen to. What should we take away from this confusion? When it comes to AI’s impacts, we don’t yet know anything for sure. But this isn’t stopping everyone from pretending like we do.
My advice, for the moment:
- Tune out both the most heated and the most dismissive rhetoric.
- Focus on tangible changes in areas that you care about that really do seem connected to AI—read widely and ask people you trust about what they’re seeing.
- Beyond that, however, follow AI news with a large grain of salt. All of this is too new for anyone to really understand what they’re saying.
AI is important. But we don’t yet fully know why.
The post No One Knows Anything About AI appeared first on Cal Newport.