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

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? 

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.

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.

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.

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.