Welcome to Complex Machinery, a newsletter about the intersection of AI and risk. It occasionally dips into related matters like complexity, business models, emerging tech, and marketplaces. (While the newsletter covers AI, there are no technical deep-dives. This is higher-level, AI's-impact-on-business-and-society material.) If you're looking for more details, read on. Need an RSS feed? Here you go. If someone pointed you to this site and you just want to subscribe, you can do that right here.…
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(Photo by Hunter Haley on Unsplash ) No matter what your take on genAI, I think we can all agree that the version described by its fans lands somewhere between "a far-off possibility" and "a constantly-shifting goalpost that charlatans sellers use to lure more marks buyers." Which means it's hardly a good reason to spoil the environment , or push people out of their homes , or gut the org chart ,…
(Image credit: fly01007 via NOAA Photo Library ) Today's newsletter continues the exploration of the AI risk "weather report." The previous installment covered the upside opportunities from genAI as well as potential threats to AI . You'll want to read that issue first if you haven't already. This time around I'm covering downside exposures driven by AI. I'll also note that the list of downside…
(Photo by Vanburn Gonsalves on Unsplash ) We interrupt this broadcast … genAI, by virtue of being a new technology, creates new opportunities and dangers. That means new risk exposures. Which means I always have something to write about in a newsletter on the intersection of AI and risk. It also means occasionally having too much to say, since breaking news can derail what I'd planned to publish…
(Image credit: Taiwan Presidential Office / 總統府, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons ) I'm using today's newsletter to share something I've been working on. It doubles as an opportunity to reinforce a point about Complex Machinery. The point: Complex Machinery is ostensibly a newsletter about "AI and risk." The former term features prominently in every issue; the latter is often implied. If we're to…
(Photo by Varshil Changani on Unsplash ) Web3 was the hottest technology just a few years ago. Individuals and companies alike were scrambling to get their piece of crypto, NFTs, and other blockchain-based products. I'd been exploring the space myself – eventually logging it all in a weekly newsletter – and in 2023 I penned an article on the hunt for web3's killer use case . Having dethroned web3…
(Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash ) Risk management lets you explore possible future events, so you can surface greater upsides and steer clear of downsides. It's about the closest you'll get to a corporate crystal ball. Not everyone wants that future vision, though. Some of your favorite tokenmaxxing companies insist on learning key lessons the hard way: first-hand and in hindsight. A rare…
(Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash ) Today’s issue includes a rare bit of good AI news at the end. Feel free to skip to the last segment if you need a weekend pick-me-up. Last time around I noted that datacenters may serve as genAI's Achilles' Heel. Upbeat marketing and hand-waving have, until now, allowed the providers to blow past any resistance. It truly felt like an unstoppable force … until…
(Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash ) After the previous issue's essay , I'm catching up on recent news. Here are five short segments on the riskier parts of AI. Last-minute additions One benefit of writing a sometimes-topical newsletter is that the news gives me plenty to write about. One drawback is that an untimely arrival of news can lead to last-minute edits or additions. This week I…
(Photo by Seval Torun on Unsplash ) This essay has been in my head for a while now and I’ve finally written it down. Subscribers can look forward to more "cleaning out the backlog" pieces over the coming weeks. It's entirely human to review the past to make sense of the present. That's why so many people see the genAI mania through the lens of the Dot-Com era. Both offer an overheated tech market,…
(Photo by Dibya Jyoti Ghosh on Unsplash ) This time, it's different. No, really. There are bubbles, and there are bubbles. As I've noted before , it's technically too early to call the genAI period a bubble. We have to wait until it collapses, as the wave of excitement may still turn into a successful, extended bull run. But the more I look around, the latter path becomes less likely. The lack of…
