Derek Ruths
AI-assisted coding is amazing. It's fast. It's powerful. It's also currently called "vibe coding". This term will lead to trouble. I've been a serious software developer for many years - and after having now built several substantial, release-grade software projects using full-blown AI assistance, I'm quite convinced that I was not "vibe coding" - I'm also convinced that's true for anyone building…
"Agentic AI" has become very hot. It seems as if there's a new agentic announcement every other day - regardless of whether you're following ChatGPT (OpenAI), Co-Pilot (Microsoft), Gemini (Google), Claude (Anthropic), or North (Cohere). That's translated into a lot of executives demanding that their companies get agentic solutions. "Agents" are AI systems that can perform tasks - typically as part…
Policy is all about balancing conflicting values. But when it comes to AI, we often entirely ignore the crucial conflict. We focus, talk, and trumpet social values, but seem to forget that there’s often another value at play - one that is uncomfortable and awkward to acknowledge. We ignore it at our peril. Take big AI companies' use of unauthorized copyrighted training data as an example. This has…
The internet just got done making fun of Mark Zuckerberg's epic fail of a launch day for their "smart" glasses. I thought that would be the end of it. But then a promotional email from them landed in my inbox. Opening the email, here's the first thing we see... " Athletic Intelligence Is Here "... sounds potentially cool until you see the image directly below it - with a serious cyclist asking his…
The blue checkmark of Twitter’s verified accounts remains one of social media’s most coveted baubles. The symbol, which appears next to a user’s name to signify that a given account genuinely belongs to the person, company or organization it claims to represent, remains hard to get and doing so involves a vetting and verification process. So it was strange when, on July 15, a long list of verified…