Digital simplicity Emanuel Lukawiecki Digital simplicity Emanuel Lukawiecki

Getting back to basics

RSS feeds are amazing. Really Simple Syndication is a standardized format that allows applications to access website updates. Essentially, this primitive—yet incredibly valuable—feed can let you follow practically everything in the digital world. Whether it be social media platforms (e.g., YouTube), news channels, or other forms of content. The best part is that you can filter content (e.g., I have filtered out most short-form content) and decide how much algorithmic sorting you want. Meaning you can decide to have an algorithm sort your content, or you can have it in chronological order.

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Digital simplicity Emanuel Lukawiecki Digital simplicity Emanuel Lukawiecki

The end of traffic towards your content

Nilay Pitel coined “Google Zero” to reflect the reality that Google (but the broader AI industry as well) is shifting from a triaging system that provides the would-be searcher a link to your content to know an AI tool either providing the individual a response or an AI agent receiving the content without a human recipient.

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Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki

What is the value proposition of AI in your personal life?

I find AI incredibly promising and use it in my professional endeavours. But at least for now, I am unsure of the value proposition these tools offer in the personal realm. This may mean that, eventually, frontier-model development companies will shift their priorities away from the personal altogether and focus only on the enterprise. We may already be seeing this

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Rethinking Eisenhower’s matrix

The Eisenhower decision matrix is a useful framework, but it will need to be rethought for the age of AI. The matrix is essentially a tool for deciding whether to do, schedule, delegate, or delete a specific task.

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Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki

Creating new worlds

Most people can mentally map spaces. You can almost instinctively picture the route in most environments you are familiar with. Large language models (LLMs) do not have this same ability. But could world models bring this understanding? 

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Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki

Parsing through synthetic media

I don’t know what it is about AI videos that immediately makes me question the validity and value of the content. At first, these videos were fun, quirky, and novel. But now that they are inundating more of my life, and the consequences of this synthetic media are becoming apparent, it is more vital than ever for people to know how to parse through this media.

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Humanness Emanuel Lukawiecki Humanness Emanuel Lukawiecki

Overcoming the desire to make human connection easier

People have been found to hold a negative perception of outsourcing socio-relational tasks. Yet people love to find and continue to seek efficiency. AI promises to keep the proverbial efficiency train rolling, but at great cost to our relationships. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, there is no substitute for investing time and energy.

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Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki

Employing Ulysses contracts to dissuade AI peacocking

In Greek mythology, Ulysses has his men tie him down to hear — yet not fall for — the calls of the sirens. The sirens alluringly promised knowledge, wisdom, and pleasure — if only he would stop and divert the direction of his ship. Meanwhile, the other people onboard put wax in their ears and stayed on course despite Ulysses' pleas. As you navigate the choppy waters of AI, I hope to offer you potential strategies to create your very own contract. So that you can tie yourself to the mast (e.g., ground yourself) so that you can hear the seductive calls from the sirens yet stay afloat and on course.

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Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki

The sensationalism of agentic models

AI agents have the potential to be a democratizing force for good, giving us all more free time. But there are also many risks with these tools that must be considered. These risks are not the overblown doom or prosperity that may occur sometime in the future. Instead, they are the current risks that are not getting the airtime they deserve.

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Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki Living with AI Emanuel Lukawiecki

The cart, the horse, and what it means for you

The expression “the cart before the horse” provides a useful framework for examining the current state of artificial intelligence (AI) development. Currently, those developing frontier models are trying to build a tool that is both impactful (in terms of automation and economic stimulus) and profitable for their business. In my view, using the above idiom, the horse (or the first thing companies should be concerned with is impact). Followed by the cart, which I view as profitability. Unfortunately, it seems many of these companies are shifting gears away from developing better, more impactful models and are instead looking for a quick buck.

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Humanness Emanuel Lukawiecki Humanness Emanuel Lukawiecki

The rise of AI companionship

Loneliness is rising, and some see AI as a solution to our intimacy gap. AI companions—often chatbots paired with avatars—promise to fill our need for connection. These companions are not new and have been widely reported on over the years. Alas, as with everything in the modern era, concern over this suite of technologies has subsided, replaced by other worries. Yet, the trend towards artificial intimacy continues.

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Humanness Emanuel Lukawiecki Humanness Emanuel Lukawiecki

Dissolving brain rust

AI agents are cool and promise great things — but do not succumb to the rapid rise in cognitive deskilling across the labour market. I have outlined a few ideas for you to consider and adopt if they suit your needs.

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Slaying your productivity dragon

The first whole week of January has come and gone, and with it has come the usual hum of the knowledge worker. The return to normalcy has meant emails, meetings, and instant messenger notifications galore. But what if there was a better way? What if this new year, we, as knowledge workers in the digital age, sought out a better, deeper way to engage with our work?

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