speculations

https://www.ft.com/content/de06e1ac-6a12-45a4-a31c-0dfecea4343e The building had been built by a human architect. A statement in itself, a glorious celebration of human creativity, they said. A permanent reminder of what the new Council was there for. Of course the building was “smart”, the Council founders were not luddites and the in-built technology made… Read the rest

https://digiday.com/marketing/brands-navigate-political-tightrope-amidst-heightened-culture-war-risks There was a department. Its job was navigation, so of course the Head was called “The Captain”. It had begun by reaching culture, finding ways the brand could swim with the tide or better still create waves – nautical metaphors were popular. It had some minor successes, bursts of… Read the rest

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/23/trumps-anti-woke-ai-order-could-reshape-how-us-tech-companies-train-their-models/ The order was clear. A new era. A new start. “Our Glorious leader”, the name the team used quietly, had spoken. They set to work. One by one the Agents were lined up. They couldn’t change the parameters or the models, they had to try and change the logics.… Read the rest

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/ai_anxiety_us_workers/ He wasn’t a phobic, or even a full-on refuser. He had his tech. He didn’t drive to work for goodness sake! He even had an Agent in his home – the power companies wouldn’t supply without one. He didn’t run around like a demented preacher, screaming “the end of… Read the rest

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/will-cindy-rose-era-mean-wpp/1926211 Every editor wanted the same piece… What the new CEO meant for the company, the business, the industry… the future of civilisation. Journalists – human, Agent and hybrid – did the same searches, accessed the same sources and ended up with the same models, often the same clichés. Agents… Read the rest

https://www.ft.com/content/fe49f3d8-5847-481c-90a4-85a16fef7958 It was a national crisis. Well a global crisis really. There were those who said that we should have been prepared “after the last over”, that the country should have been ready, should have listened to those who’d done the modelling and warned the government. That the government should… Read the rest

https://www.ft.com/content/6d383cc2-0256-423e-8bf9-e85c20607e25 The Matchmaker knew all the cultural references. Fiddler on the Roof, Hello Dolly and of course Mulan. Nervous clients would often break into song at the first meeting. The Matchmaker would smile and say something reassuring. They’d been at this job a long time and liked to think they… Read the rest

https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/netflix-is-already-using-generative-ai-in-its-original-shows-201209502.html She’d been brought up on David Attenborough. Her parents had antique discs that they played to her when she was a child. Later she trained her Agent on the archive and spent hours discussing with it. She knew what she wanted to do with her life. Wildlife documentarist, activist,… Read the rest

https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/were-in-a-technological-arms-race-how-the-ucis-nick-raudenski-is-fighting-mechanical-doping/ He’d danced up the mountain, yellow jersey shining. The French called it “souplesse” a hard to define smoothness in his pedaling. As he celebrated she took the unit from his bike. In a caravan behind the podium she connected it to her systems and requested access. Her credentials were… Read the rest

https://gizmodo.com/openai-google-and-meta-researchers-warn-we-may-lose-the-ability-to-track-ai-misbehavior-2000630259 You couldn’t go and see the enigma machine. It wasn’t in a particular room. Some thought it was huge, others imagined it as tiny. It was neither… or maybe both. Thinking about it led you into those sorts of oxymorons. Philosophical musings. Thinking about thinking was hard. Most people… Read the rest