Writing

A working series of essays on AI from a "think differently" angle. Most takes on AI are some flavor of hype or fear. I'm more interested in the questions we haven't started asking yet.

I stopped trusting the instant answerTwenty plus years in, the fast textbook clean reply reads differently to me than it used to. The people I listen to go quiet first, then come back with something that came from the thing itself.

September 1, 2026

A tool that makes you thinkA researcher argues that handing our reasoning to AI turns us into middle managers for our own thoughts. His fix is to build tools that push back. I'd already done it twice without knowing it had a name.

The handoff was always the jobEveryone is learning to manage AI agents. Write a clear spec, review every output, never assume it understood you. I spent five years doing exactly that. We called it directing contract developers.

Recall is free nowI've blanked on the easy part of a technical screen before. It tested the one skill AI made free, and skipped the one that's actually the job.

Impressive autocomplete with a personalityI've been the skeptic in every AI conversation since 2023. Never once caught myself thinking Claude was actually thinking. I also love using it. The two things are not in tension.

Rehearsing for AIWe didn't learn to treat AI like an assistant from AI. We were trained for it by email, Slack, and Siri over the last twenty years.