Jun 29, 2026
The Model Is Not the System
There is a class of AI deployment failure that has nothing to do with the model. The model can be well-trained and well-validated. The precision and recall can be exactly where you…
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Archive page 2 of 67
Jun 25, 2026
Neurons All the Way Down
In October 2012, the full results of the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge were released. The competition required systems to classify photographs into 1,000 object categories and measured performance as top-five…
Jun 19, 2026
Let the Data Decide
The knowledge engineer's problem was getting the knowledge out of the expert. A human specialist could diagnose a disease or configure a computer system, but articulating exactly why, step by step, in…
Jun 10, 2026
Simple Rules, Surprising Worlds
In 1970, the mathematician John Horton Conway devised a game. You start with a grid. Each cell is either alive or dead. A handful of rules govern what happens next: a live…
Jun 8, 2026
INSERT COIN
Organizations are discovering that AI token pricing produces exactly the kind of behavioral distortions that metered communications produced a generation ago. Uber Technologies burned through its entire 2026 AI budget by April,…
Jun 5, 2026
Your Major Is Irrelevant
I was watching a video recently in which someone complained about having a bachelor's degree and being unable to find work. A stitch appeared almost immediately with the retort that was already…
Jun 4, 2026
The Second Winter
The year is 1987. Symbolics, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of Lisp machines, single-user workstations purpose-built to run Lisp, the language most closely associated with artificial intelligence. Their hardware is beautiful, powerful,…
Jun 2, 2026
Proving Something Is True Is Not the Same as Proving It Matters
Hantavirus is in the news this week. The MV Hondius outbreak, the Andes strain, American passengers in quarantine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center as of this writing. People are paying…
May 29, 2026
The Ecology of Work
Nobody wanted the job. That is the detail that gets lost in every retelling of what happened at General Motors' Inland Fisher Guide Plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey, in 1961. The…
May 26, 2026
Ohtani Is What Baseball Looked Like Before It Got Soft
In 1973, the American League decided that one of its nine players did not have to play baseball. The pitcher would hit, they ruled, only until he wouldn't. The designated hitter rule…
May 22, 2026
Economics Is Not the Study of Money
Somewhere along the way, someone got the idea that economics is about money. It is not, at least not in the way people usually mean that. Economics is about choice: what people…
May 20, 2026
The Rule-Based Interregnum
The first AI winter did not kill artificial intelligence. It redirected it. The researchers who survived the funding cuts of the early 1970s did not abandon the project of building intelligent machines.…