Bo Sacks recently highlighted a problem we’re going to have to face in the near future: AI feeding on itself. If AI is trained on content from the internet then as AI displaces human authors, AI will be training on AI-created content. It’s not quite Ouroboros – the mythical snake eating its own tail –…
I’m frustrated. If you weren’t already aware of the AI-powered calamity in our near future, Matt Shumer gave it a good intro in “Something Big is Coming.” We’ve been warned, but we’re not taking the warning seriously. AI is already causing mass layoffs, and reports estimate anywhere from 10 to 50% of jobs could be…
Publishing is under threat from many angles, but that begs a question: what do we mean by “publishing” and “publishers”? Are you a publisher if you have a blog, or a podcast? Is AI a publisher? Will it become one? Maybe, to all those questions, but I think a more rigorous definition is in order….
Summary: The publishing industry has historically relied on the “write once, sell many times” model, incurring high fixed costs for creation but recovering them through low-marginal-cost distribution — a system amplified by digital media like podcasts and videos. AI disrupts this by enabling personalized content generation for each user, but this new model contradicts the…
In this interview with Paul Gewuerz, we speak about the accelerating disruption AI poses to publishing, local media, and the broader economy. I share my insights from my decades long career in B2B publishing and my current work helping publishers bridge the gap between technology and strategy. We talk about why AI may not be…
I’m a big advocate of “good enough” for many things, but there are times when “good enough” is a bad bargain, and technology is a prime example. Q: How is your IT department like the D.C. Metro? A: Both of them have huge incentives to put off essential upgrades and improvements until you have a…
This is a quick summary of how to use and not use AI in a small law firm. You may find it applicable to your business as well. Executive Summary Warning: Before you post anything to an AI system ask yourself if you would say it out loud in a room full of strangers. Opportunity:…
Are you unintentionally sharing your own or your client’s confidential information with AI? Some AI features are on by default. Just today I was looking at a Google doc and noticed the summary on the side. In order to make that summary, Gemini had to read that document. You should check that, and you might…
Once upon a time, clever businessmen learned how to make a hamburger, soda, and fries for $6 — by optimizing every step of the process. Families came from everywhere to buy these burgers. It was a happy place. Then Alan Mink had an idea. “What if I replace all the workers with robots? That would…
Merrian-Webster has coined “slop” as the word of the year. They define slop as … “Digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” Fair enough. Bad AI content comes in many varieties. On the content side we speak of the “tsunamic of bullshit.” On the image side,…
Every major technological revolution in American history displaced workers, but none threatened to eliminate entire categories of cognitive and manual labor at the same time. That’s what artificial intelligence threatens to do, and that’s why it’s different than previous tech revolutions. The loom displaced jobs in the textile industry, but it created wealth that made…
Thinking becomes smarter when you step outside yourself — whether through imagined interlocutors, prayer, or deliberate perspective-shifting. My friend Roger Overall started a chat on LinkedIn about talking to yourself. Do you do it? Is it helpful? Roger mentions a ‘Simple Truths’ card deck that provides sentences designed to help you untangle a thorny question…
I don’t typically post videos here, but this one is so on target that I made an exception. This former Google employee is singing my life with his words. Ex-Google Insider WARNS: “You Are Not Prepared For 2027” (Click on the title or image above to see the whole article, which includes the video.)
You can make the fastest, most readable website with the perfect design, elegant search features, and your own custom GPT and it still won’t be more convenient than a generic AI chatbot — because your readers’ workflow has fundamentally changed. Here’s the old workflow. Search, click, scroll, skim, avoid ads, extract the answer from a…
Most people seem to have this vague idea that science advances when a new theory comes along that explains the facts better. The new theory is so compelling, or so we imagine, that people abandon the old orthodoxy and adopt the new one. Following the facts, and all that sciency stuff. According to Thomas Kuhn’s…