People ask me this question a fair bit. I mumble something about huge amounts of data and lots of computers. I got the question last night from someone who knew that AIs generate one word after another, but wanted to know How do AIs work? They didn’t understand how that simple process could possibly create an image or answer a complex question.
By Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Knopf, October 21, 2025
By Timothy Egan, Viking, April 4, 2023
GIL Confusion
Last night I was at Dazzle Jazz Denver to hear Cyrus Chestnut. His trio—bassist Herman Burney and drummer Kelton Norris—locked in from the downbeat. Years together give a band a shared brain; you can hear it in the space between notes.
The Initial Project
This was going to be a simple article about how to build Goblin’s BandBox, which is a clever piece of exercise equipment created by Pascal Dornier. The dice of life didn’t roll as I had hoped. What follows includes the instructions and my quixotic quest for perfection. It even involves a car chase.
I bet it all on Amazon starting in July 2020. By February 2022, I realized I just didn’t have the stomach for it. It was a big bet. During that period, I lost 3.0% AIRR, and the S&P 500 gained 20.6% (AIRR), or a cummulative 40.6% loss in comparison to the S&P 500.
By Malcolm X, Ballantine, January 15, 1992, 0345376714
By Elizabeth Kolbert, Bloomsbury, January 15, 2015, 978-1408851241