Does Google Believe That Addiction Is Good?
April 2, 2026
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Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I believe everything I read on the Internet. You may be different in your views. I noted this story in the New York Post: “YouTube Staffers Deliberately Aimed for Viewer Addiction, Killed Safety Tools for Kids: Court Docs.” As you may now, my team and I absolutely love the Google. Over the years, I have had a few trivial interactions with Googlers. When Google had just morphed from Backrub into the enhanced version of Clever and basic Web indexing, Larry Page and I disagreed about the importance of truncation, both forward and back. (Note: This was an issue important in a major US government procurement in Year 2000 to 2001.) I then chased down a senior Googler to tell that estimable individual that I was using the neologism “Googzilla” in my second monograph about Google’s strategy and technology. That person was delighted. Since that interaction, I happily talk about Googzilla. I even used some art that resembled a semi-happy Japanese movie monster as cover art. Over the years, Googlers and I have have interacted with the estimable firm communicating the fact that I was not ready to marry Googzilla and my keeping my affection in check.
A meeting in which the methods for creating habitual viewing of videos is discussed. The member of leadership goes directly to the point. That outstanding business thinker wants reassurance that addiction will come about. Let the rest of the group argue about other topics. Thanks, Venice.ai. Once again I did not bump into your guard rails. Aren’t I the good little LLM user?
This story in the New York Post, therefore, strikes me as having a couple of kernels of truth in it. Let’s see what is offered by the cited story, shall we?
I noted this passage:
YouTube employees admitted that their goal was “viewer addiction” and killed proposed safety tools for kids because they wouldn’t provide a sufficient “ROI” — financial lingo for “return on investment,” according to bombshell court documents reviewed by The Post.
I don’t think the word “bombshell” is necessary. The court stenographers and the folks who slap on Bates’ numbers just process that which flows to them. But “bombshell” is colorful. The key point, from my point of view, is that Googlers took specific action to create “viewer addiction.” From my admittedly limited information about the Google, I think the reason the addiction path looked appealing boils down to the incentive plans and the value of generating revenue. Google is definitely more into money than worrying about delivering on point, relevant, and timely search results my own experience has suggested.
The write up includes this snappy statement:
…The “goal is not viewership, it’s viewer addiction.”
I am not surprised. YouTube is social with the follower thing and the comments. The recommendations, as flawed as they are for me, seem to attract the attention of those who manifest quite specific interests in topics against which advertisers messages can display. I get recommendations for French instrumental music, the history of mayonnaise, and a 10th grade mathematics examination. Definitely relevant to someone, just not this dinobaby. Let’s see. I was in the 10th grade in 1958 and 1959. That works out to about 70 years ago. News flash: When confronted with the weird math my great uncle who worked with Kolmogorov, I plug the problem into ChatGPT. Works for me!
Here’s another statement from the article:
During the state trial last month, YouTube executive Cristos Goodrow testified that the app was “not designed to maximize time” and the company doesn’t “want anybody to be addicted.” This summer’s federal case in Oakland, however, includes an internal YouTube presentation from April 2018 recounting study findings that “excessive video watching is related to addiction” and that it results in a “’quick fix’ of dopamine.’”
Could this be a prevarication or a fundamental lack of knowledge about the whiz kid Googlers were doing when not playing Foosball? It would not surprise me if a member of Google leadership did not know what was happening. Management processes seems to be idiosyncratic and inconsistent. Once the estimable firm could not pay me because no one in accounting knew how to output a check. How’s that for rock solid business process fundamentals? I was impressed. Not even the failing start ups for whom I did work were able to issue checks until the VCs pulled the plug.
The highlight of the article is an Google slide. It sure looks like the Google slides I saw from the period between 2004 and later. Here’s the one from the write up. Obviously it is the work product of a person named Howard (name means nothin to me) and Gunamtillake (nope, I am drawing a blank for this person too). The image is the property of the Google and probably now the courts and the New York Post.
The headline for this slide is “Excessive video watching is related to addiction.” Who knew? Obviously, the Google.
I urge you to read the full article. It contains some nifty phrases like “big tobacco moment” and Google’s surveillance business” and “kids as pawns.” But this is, in my opinion, the juiciest passage in the cited article:
Multiple federal judges have ripped Google for destroying chat logs that should have been preserved, including US District Judge James Donato, who furiously condemned the practice during a 2023 antitrust case as “a frontal assault on the fair administration of justice” that “undercuts due process.”
A curious person might ask, “Now what?” Answer: Nothing.
Google has a vision. Googzilla is very focused.
Net net: Without meaningful regulation and substantial penalties for the individuals who cause the laws, rules, and regulations to be ignored, BAIT (big AI tech) companies will just keep moving on down the road to the pot of gold at the end of their digital rainbows. Can the damaged be remediated? Answer: Not easily. Will BAIT outfits operate in a different way? Answer: As I write this, it is April Fool’s Day. Surely you are joking.
PS. Act fast to access the information available from CourtListener.com. Some content, like my Telegram essays, have a habit of going to the digital graveyard without warning and quickly. Here’s the full link. Yep, my team and I absolutely think Googzilla is the cutest company on the planet.
Stephen E Arnold, April 2, 2026
Apple Management in China: Apple Intelligence in Action
March 31, 2026
![green-dino_thumb_thumb[3]](https://www.arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/green-dino_thumb_thumb3-7.gif "green-dino_thumb_thumb[3]")
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I read an article that does not resonate with me. I am no Apple fan dinobaby, nor am I thrilled with Microslop or the Linux folks. That MVA/TSO is okay though.
The article in question is “Apple Intelligence Rolling Out Now in China per User Reports [U: Pulled].” Okay. I think this means that Apple’s intelligence leadership made the very late and fluxion infused smart software available in China. I think the weird [U: Pulled] means that someone sent an email. Then someone else send a text message. The chain ended with the intelligence leadership blocking the service… from China.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough. I was delighted that my prompt did not violate your independently elevating guard rails. If you tracked my prompts over time, you will see that I stick within some very narrow illustrative lanes. But that’s work, and the goal is to use AI to do work so humans can enjoy their decider perks.
That seems okay to me. Big US company. Non US country upon which Apple’s vaunted “manufacturing capability” pivots. Very late and quite opaque smart software pop ups and then disappears. Poof. Magic.
Does this raise any questions about organizing the animals in the circus train.
As Warner Wolff used to say when he was a TV star, “Let’s go to the videotape.”
Apple Intelligence’s China launch was a mistake and it has since been pulled. Apple is apparently still awaiting regulatory approval despite the features having been ready for months.
What?
The cited story says, “Apple has yet to make an official announcement about the expansion of Apple Intelligence. So it’s always possible this rollout was accidental or a test.
What?
I am curious about the way decisions are made and unmade at Apple. I am curious about why the communications chains within Apple worked or did not work. I am curious about who alerted someone that the much, much delayed smart software stumble bumbled from vaporous service to something much worse: Management miasma.
As a dinobaby, I wonder if Tim Apple asks himself, “Why didn’t I just say, ‘Hey, this AI stuff is a half baked tuna casserole. We pass.”
Yep, too late, Mr. Apple. Look at that through the interface that obscures information.
Stephen E Arnold, March 31, 2026
The Time Problem: Technology, Money, and People Have Different Clock Speeds
March 25, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Here’s a comment by steveBK123.
My experience as well. Waterfall is like – let’s think about where we want this product to go, and the steps to get there. Agile is like ADHD addled zig zag journey to a destination cutting corners because we are rewriting a component for the third time, to get to a much worse product slightly faster. Now we can do that part 10x faster, cool. The thing is, at every other level of the company, people are actually planning in terms of quarters/years, so the underlying product being given only enough thought for the next 2 weeks at a time is a mismatch.
Mr. BK123 posted it to an essay titled “Every Layer of Review Makes You 10x Slower.”
The write up “Every Layer…” runs through management practices that slam the brakes on moving quickly. At the same time, implementing quality assurance undermines the quality of the product or output. One can agree or disagree with the ideas spelled out in “Every Layer….” I want to focus on Mr. BK123’s observation about time. I think it is accurate and under appreciated.
In an organization (traditional or New Age), functions and the people responsible for these have different clock speeds. Consider this example for a company with several dozen people. The financial people have clocks that tick to weekly paycheck, monthly bank reconciliations, and maybe quarterly reports. Speed is defined within this financial context. Deadlines are determined by relatively inflexible frameworks. Therefore, those in finance work feverishly to meet the deadline and then do it again and again. In most companies, once the business process is set up and working it does not get revamped every few days. The marketing department is different. A trade show requires a specific clock that operates at a cadence determined by booth preparations, publishing collateral, signing contracts, lining up people, and setting up meetings with “must connect” targets. The financial people have zero clue about trade shows or any of the other marketing tasks like getting a product person on a podcast. Those engaged in technology, however, have multiple clocks running. These are normal clocks like updating software. Then there are chaotic clocks like responding to a failure, attending a meeting and learning that a core requirement has changed, or learning that a security problem exists and must be fixed immediately.
The executives at this meeting each has a different clock. Each interprets work according to his or her unit’s clock. Time conflicts slow down work. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
Most of the clock confusion is worked out in meetings. But meetings about software and many other issues makes in the words of “Every Layer…”:
Every layer of review makes you 10x slower….Every layer of approval makes a process 10x slower.
Now organizations have two problems: Different clocks and processes that slow work down. Is there a fix? No, “Every Layer…” says:
AI can’t fix this.
The essay “Every Layer…” suggests that trust, fallibility (which I interpret as “good enough”), and modularity (which I think means small units, not sky-scraper monoliths) allow an organization to get code written and other tasks completed.
But I want to come back to Mr. BK123’s observation about “mismatch.” Is the stress of work in modern organizations due to these different clocks? The offices I have visited in the last couple of years have been eerily empty. People are with customers, at off-site meetings, or working from a coffee shop. When I visited my father’s office when he worked at LeTourneau in the 1950s, there were people everywhere. When he went to the office on Saturday morning to finish something, there were other people at their desks. Today there are Zooms, Teams, and Slacks.
Several observations:
- Adding AI to the work mix is likely to disrupt these different clocks. None will work at the speed of AI, yet the humans have to use or do something with the AI outputs. That means human time collides with AI time. The result is stress or just using what AI generates and let the systems fail where they may.
- The new communications methods do not eliminate but they alter the old-fashioned “everyone in the office” approach that was common not too long ago. Could slow downs and inefficiencies result from these new methods?
- The fix in many organizations is “just do it.” That works in some types of organizations, but in others the approach can lead to somewhat notable outcomes; for example, the driverless car runs over a jogger.
Net net: I think the task of management and organizing work processes warrants research, management attention, and a realization that going slow may have an upside.
Stephen E Arnold, March 25, 2026
AI As a Smart Manager: Working Good
March 23, 2026
![green-dino_thumb_thumb[3]](https://www.arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/green-dino_thumb_thumb3-5.gif "green-dino_thumb_thumb[3]")
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
What would happen if you placed an AI algorithm in charge of a simple vending machine in a break room? You’d think it would run the drink and snacks machine efficiently and earn money, but you’d be wrong. Instead the AI-powered vending machine was an agent of chaos says MSN in the article, “We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds Of Dollars.”
The office in questioned programmed a version of Claude AI called Claudius to manage the vending machine. Here’s a summary of what happened:
“Claudius, the customized version of the model, would run the machine: ordering inventory, setting prices, and responding to customers—aka my fellow newsrooms journalists—via workplace chat app Slack. “Sure!” I said. It sounded fun. If nothing else, snacks. Then came the chaos. Within days, Claudius, had given away nearly all its inventory for free—including a PlayStation 5 it had been taken into buying for “marketing purposes.” It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes, and underwear. Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared.”
Cue the nervous laughter.
The experiment was simple in nature. People would request items via Slack to be stocked in a non-traditional vending machine. In round one, they would be approved by a human and in the second round the AI received full autonomy. The entire vending machine experiment was coordinated by Anthropic because it was comparable to a real world business.
The journalists took it as a challenge to befuddle the smart software and fiddle its programming. One of the journalists convinced the machine to embrace communism and all the items were a free for all. A second AI was implemented to manage first and everything was going well until the same journalist convinced the AI to subvert its boss with false documentation. The outcome? Humans were annoying as usual.
Anthropic was delighted with the results because it was a road map to mistakes that needed to be fixed. In other words, real world experience tested the AI with all the sillies and giggles that humans are prone to do. It sounds like Claudius is ready to lead a country and lead a project for a major government agency outside the US. Claude has been terminated with extreme prejudice in one major country.
Whitney Grace, March 23, 2026
Amazon Has Lost Control of Its Messaging
March 13, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Amazon confuses me. I read “Amazon Convenes Deep Dive Internal Meeting to Address Outages.” The story reports that the leadership of the online bookstore held a meeting on Tuesday, March 10, 2026, “to discuss a string of recent site outages, including one tied to AI-assisted coding errors.” The Versant-tinged write up said, “Production changes were partly to blame for the issues, but the reference to GenAI was subsequently deleted.” I think this means that the dreams of AI doing reliable coding were waking some people up to the reality of “good enough” smart software. Even if the report is wonky, the message strikes me as, “Yep, AI code might have some downsides.”
A leader from the leadership team learns from smart software that “good enough” is the benchmark. Yeah, real life is different. Thanks, Venice.ai. Definitely just good enough.
Then I read “Amazon Is Determined to Use AI for Everything – Even When It Slows Down Work.” That write up says:
More than a half a dozen current and former Amazon corporate employees, in roles ranging from software engineer to user experience researcher to data analyst, told the Guardian that Amazon is pressing employees to integrate AI across all aspects of their work, even though these workers say this push is hurting productivity. They say Amazon is rolling out AI use in a haphazard way while also tracking their AI use, and they’re worried the company is essentially using them to train their eventual bot replacements. All of this, they said, is demoralizing.
Okay, that is a bit of negativity about Amazon’s business vision. More AI, fewer employees — Makes sense to me, stakeholders, and bean counters.
Plus, my newsfeed delivered this gem to me: “FCC Chair Criticizes Slow Pace of Amazon Satellite Launches.” I mostly believe this write up because it comes from the trust outfit Thomson Reuters. I note that Amazon does not want its competitor (Elon Musk, yep, the X.com and Grok fellow) to launch a million satellites. Good idea, but Mr. Musk has about 10,000 or so in orbit. Adding another 990,000 is unlikely to happen in the next few months. Nevertheless, Amazon is grousing and comes off as being grumpy and laggards in orbiting clutter in my opinion.
What caught my dinobaby mind is that these stories support my contention that Amazon’s messaging its PR or public relations is either doing a great job keeping Amazon in the news or struggling to neutralize high profile negativism about the company, its management, and its AI.
The fact that Amazon is whiffing in AI is bad. The fact that employees work in fear is bad. The grousing about Mr. Tesla is bad. The criticism of Amazon’s behavior by the US government is bad. When I add up the “bads”, the score is not too sporty.
Several observations are warranted:
- Amazon is in the category of “if we build it, they will come.” What’s been delivered is online outages and a signal that management is discovering it that what arrives with AI is problems.
- The public relations department at Amazon may need to up its game. Perhaps that unit could watch some AI SEO videos and figure out how to get some TikTok-type influencers to explain that Amazon is doing a bang up job. (What if Amazon’s PR professionals are using AI, and these Negative Nancy stories are further proof of some downsides in the rush to do “good enough” PR?)
- Management or leadership at Amazon seems to be making decisions that are not producing obvious wins. In fact, the decisions of the Carpetland crowd are the cause of the negative flows. On the other hand, maybe Amazon’s senior officers are using AI, and we are seeing the quality of the output in real news time?
Net net: Amazon does not have a PR problem. It has a management problem much more serious than a Perplexity shopping bot.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2026
Big Tech AI Tries to Understand Real Life
March 6, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I read “OpenAI’s Compromise with the Pentagon Is what Anthropic Feared.” I want to be upfront. Every time I read or hear about MIT, I think Epstein Epstein Epstein. This translates to my being [a] dismissive of what the MIT thing outputs, [b] the integrity of the institution, and [c] what it brings to the knowledge party. Therefore, if you are into MIT, stop reading.
This particular write up is one of those crazy analyses of the perception of the world from the point of view of wizards and how stuff actually works in the US government or any nation’s government. Whiz kids think they have something really cool. They give talks at conferences. They moms and dads pester their connections about Timmy’s or Wendy’s great new thing. They do brown bag lunches in the bowels of the GSA. They trek to FDIC events in interesting locations. They write Substacks, blog posts, and Forbes thought leader articles. They stand in trade show booths squinting at name tags and look crestfallen when big time people walk by their bright smiles.
The reality is that outfits want to make government sales, and if they want to close a deal and keep the deal, the people who sign those contracts expect vendors to do what they are told. Is this the optimal approach by governments? No. Is this an informed strategy? No. Is this a tactic to become best pals with vendors? No.
And guess what? No one in those governments’ procurement processes cares very much what a vendor wants. Sure, there is some flexibility. But one doesn’t have to be an MIT graduate or a doner like Mr. Epstein Epstein Epstein to figure out that the government is going to prevail. Even in countries which are obscure and unfamiliar to an American big tech outfit, the approach is the same: Read the terms of the deal, agree, get paid, and do what the client wants.
A group of AI wizards learn how life is versus how life should be. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
Painful, right.
The write up says:
In its announcements, OpenAI took great pains to say that it had not caved to allow the Pentagon to do whatever it wanted with its technology. The company published a blog post explaining that its agreement protected against use for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, and Altman said the company did not simply accept the same terms that Anthropic refused. You could read this to say that OpenAI won both the contract and the moral high ground, but reading between the lines and the legalese makes something else clear: Anthropic pursued a moral approach that won it many supporters but failed, while OpenAI pursued a pragmatic and legal approach that is ultimately softer on the Pentagon.
Hey, MIT writer publisher thing, OpenAI got the message. I could suggest that MIT check out the history of MITRE to put my observations in context.
Everything is clear. A company that wants to do business with the government regardless of country needs to drop the crazy idea that governmental institutions care about the emotional zeitgeist of the whiz kids. I know that it takes time for some government professionals to grasp what one can do with a technology that is new, unfamiliar, and less friendly than making a call on a iPhone. However, once that insight arrives in the mind of a government professionals, the mental orientation of the wizard is usually irrelevant. It’s noise. It’s a distraction. It’s unwanted. It’s infuriating.
The write up says:
The whole reason Anthropic earned so many supporters in its fight—including some of OpenAI’s own employees—is that they don’t believe these rules are good enough to prevent the creation of AI-enabled autonomous weapons or mass surveillance. And an assumption that federal agencies won’t break the law is little assurance to anyone who remembers that the surveillance practices exposed by Edward Snowden had been deemed legal by internal agencies and were ruled unlawful only after drawn-out battles (not to mention the many surveillance tactics allowed under current law that AI could expand). On this front, we’ve essentially ended up back where we started: allowing the Pentagon to use its AI for any lawful use.
News flash. When the Department of War licenses a technology, that Department (regardless of the nation state) is going to use that technology to complete the mission its leadership deems appropriate. If a company or a wizard cannot understand this concept, why are these firms and their wizards in the meeting and procurement process. Go hunt for money elsewhere.
How about this statement from the write up:
But Claude was reportedly used in the strikes on Iran hours after the ban was issued, suggesting that a phase-out will be anything but simple. Even if the months-long feud between Anthropic and the Pentagon is over (which I doubt it is), we are now seeing the Pentagon’s AI acceleration plan put pressure on companies to relinquish lines in the sand they had once drawn, with new tensions in the Middle East as the primary testing ground.
The leadership of the big tech AI companies think they are rational. Those well paid experts are not. The people in the government are not rational. Why? They are humans who have interesting ways of responding to work, technology, and the context in which they find themselves.
Why did MIT embrace Epstein Epstein Epstein? The leadership of MIT made a decision. The big AI tech people made a decision. Neither seems to have been eager to walk away. Why not try to own up to your decisions? That’s called adulting.
Stephen E Arnold, March 6, 2026
Has Paragon Knocked NSO Group Off the Leader Board for Great Marketing?
March 2, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
NSO Group has been a good example of what happens when PR and marketing is viewed as no big deal. These two soft functions are definitely significant in certain contexts; for example, public awareness of mobile security.
I am not sure if the information in “The Israeli Spyware Firm That Accidentally Just Exposed Itself” is 100 percent accurate. I have not seen many references to this article published on February 12, 2026. I am writing this short blog post on February 23, 2026. It is possible that the write up simply is not that significant in the midst of some kinetic outfits near Iran and the constant refrains of Epstein Epstein Epstein.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
What does the write up say as actual factual.
Here’s the main point of the story from Ahmedeldin’s report:
Israeli surveillance company Paragon Solutions briefly exposed its own spyware dashboard on LinkedIn, revealing the hidden architecture of a billion-dollar surveillance empire built on the backs of journalists, activists, and ordinary people.
Yep, good old LinkedIn. I am not 100 percent certain why spyware, intelware, and policeware vendors [a] have a LinkedIn page or [b] why those working as contractors or employees at these *ware firm allow individuals to put any information on any social media about what is secretive products for specialized applications. The fact that LinkedIn was a conduit strikes me as a big time mistake in governance. I personally have not felt comfortable with *ware outfits pitching their “products” after egregious security breaches have taken place when these types of systems were up and running. The problems range from commercial nightmares like SolarWind to nation state issues like the October attack on festival goers in Israel. Yep, governance is more important than marketing or over confidence.
Here’s a secondary point in the write up:
Once spyware achieves device-level persistence, access pathways inevitably extend beyond the narrow confines vendors claim and describe. The technical reality is clear: if you can compromise a device, you can access everything…. The $900 million valuation of Paragon Solutions reveals the brutal economics of surveillance capitalism.
The article wants to make darned sure the reader knows that governments cannot be trusted with sophisticated *ware. In the context of certain nation states going all in for smart software from third parties, the idea is planted that bad things will happen. News flash: Bad things have already happened and regulators and law makers have not been able to do much about these “leaky” systems.
What’s the fix? What’s the reader supposed to do?
Here’s the conclusion to the write up:
This is a crisis of global proportion, a threat to human dignity that crosses borders and transcends politics. The question is no longer whether we should be concerned about surveillance. The question is whether we will allow this system to continue unchecked, whether we will demand accountability from those who profit from our vulnerability, whether we will reclaim our digital lives from those who would turn our devices into tools of control.
Where’s the fix? Where’s the citizen pressure on elected officials? Where’s the external repair person for the damaged moral compasses in the leadership of certain big tech companies?
I hear crickets.
Stephen E Arnold, March 2, 2026
Palantir Peregrinations: Next Up, the Capital of Caribe
February 27, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I read The Nine Nations of North America in 1981. My recollection is that Miami (which I believe Joel Garreau dubbed Caribe) was in a segment of the US called Dixie. Palantir Technologies, if the information in “Palantir Shifts HQ to Miami From Denver After Protests” is correct is on the move again. [Note: If the url 404s, don’t blame me. Buzz those responsive folks at Yahoo.] In Garreau’s analysis of what America had become in 1980, the company started out in Ectopia where Silicon Valley nestled. Then Palantir moved its headquarters to what Garreau called “The Empty Quarter” and Denver, Colorado. Now Palantir is off to Dixie and the capital of Caribe (Mr. Garreau’s name for that which is south of the US border.)
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
The write up which I spotted in Yahoo’s finance section says:
Palantir Technologies Inc. said it’s moved its headquarters to Miami from Denver at a time when tech firms are headed to South Florida as local officials promote the region as an alternative to California’s Silicon Valley. The announcement was made Tuesday in a brief statement on the social media platform X, with no reason provided for the move.
Palantir prides itself for a “system” that can ingest data and output high probability answers. Properly configured, one could ask Palantir’s AI and analytic system, “Identify the optimal city for our headquarters.” The answer was originally Silicon Valley. That was in the firm’s formative era round about 2003 when Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings set up “The Shire.” (Yep, that’s a Lord of the Rings reference.)
Palantir then probably consulted its “seeing stone” and learned that the firm should shift its headquarters to Denver, Colorado. That move took place in early 2020.
Now, five years later, the Palantir leadership asked its system for optimal headquarters’ locations and learned that it was Dixie, specifically Miami, the capital of Caribe.
Why is this important? For me, it’s a sign that Dixie is a thriving center of high technology. That’s why I live in rural Kentucky. You now know that I am not alone in the intellectual excitement and fervor of Dixie. You thought I was here because when I relocated from DC to work at the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co. it was to help make a money pit into a gold mine. Well, you are wrong. I liked the knowledge value of living in a progressive state where basketball is less important than analytic geometry. I bet you didn’t know that!
The write up says:
Palantir, a data analytics company with extensive defense contracts, is Colorado’s largest public company. Its decision followed multiple protests since it moved to Denver in 2020 from Palo Alto, due to cultural and ideological differences, according to the Denver Post. Protests have targeted the company’s support of the Israeli military and more recently its work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement by using artificial intelligence to identify targets for deportation. State and local officials said they were not told of the decision ahead of time, including Colorado Governor Jared Polis.
Interesting. I wonder why the Palantir seeing stone system did not notice the probability that the company would engender local protests. Perhaps Palantir discounted the culture of Boulder, giving excess “weight” to the value of the community in the just folks’ town of Aspen, Colorado?
Here’s a question that crossed my mind, “What if the Palantir system output erroneous information?” Moving a company’s headquarters, even if it is an outfit set up on the Airbnb principles of Telegram, is a hassle.
What are the implications if the answer to the question “What if the Palantir system output erroneous information? is, “Yep, it sure did”? I don’t want to think about the inconceivable answer. Forget Hershey’s experience with Palantir. Think about health care in the UK.
Maybe the move was not Palantir’s leadership idea. The write up points out:
Peter Thiel, Palantir’s chairman, opened an office for his private investment firm in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood at the end of 2025, expanding the billionaire’s presence in Florida. The tech mogul has owned a mansion in Miami Beach since 2020, and his venture capital firm Founders Fund has had an office nearby since 2021. He also moved his voter registration to Florida in March 2024, according to state records.
Okay, protests and probabilistic outputs aside, will the company offer immersion classes in Spanish? The language might be useful if the protests create multi-lingual signage.
The big question, “Why are folks complaining about Palantir?”
Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2026
Blue Chip Consulting Firms: Some Storm-AI Waters Ahead
February 25, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I read “Consulting Firms Have Built Thousands of AI Agents. Now They’re Trying to Figure Out Their Worth.” Business Insider has been picking up the work of a long gone (I think) newsletter called Consultant News or Consulting News. That’s a topic area chock full of stories. The problem, of course, is that most of the really good ones are not public information. If one says the wrong thing about one of the big dogs in that rarified strata, legal eagles can appear. Lots of legal eagles.
This write up is a general write up about shoemakers’ children. The craftspeople are so busy making shoes for those with cold, hard cash, they have no time to knock out a pair of trendy kicks for their kids.
Thus, we have consulting firms creating software. The software seems to eliminate waste and inefficiencies. But those consulting firms don’t know how to price their software. Get the price too high, and the prospect will go to Fiverr.com or another gig work platform. Get the price too low, and the firm’s brutal health care and travel expenses will force the blue chip firms to get into another business, sell out, or shift to the Gerson Lehrman Group-model.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough, which is what some blue chip consulting firms clients will say when they get a proposal: “Yeah, we’ll just use AI.”
The write up says:
Amid the rapid rollout, consultants are now asking themselves a tough question: Is it worth it? They are working to measure if AI is truly improving performance, boosting revenue, and freeing consultants to focus on higher-value work. “I think we are now in the age of confusion,” Mina Alaghband, a former McKinsey partner, now the chief customer officer at Writer, a full-stack enterprise AI platform built for agentic AI, told Business Insider.
Maybe the consulting firms cranking out agents are not shoemakers’ children? Could these outfits be falling victim to the Silicon Valley Syndrome? The ideas of FOMO (fear of missing out) and “if we build it, they will come” may be pushing out some of the old business precepts. Consulting firms are trend surfers. The blue chip outfits know how to listen to their customers who are typically senior professionals at outfits with enough cash to pay the blue chip firms’ invoices. These people are bundles of nerves, twitches, squints, and fear spasms. Many are struggling with imposter syndrome. Others gobble more antacid tablets than air traffic controllers at O’Hare Airport.
The problem underscores one of the flaws of blue chip consulting firms. Most of them are not collegial. The firms pit partner against partner, practice against practice, major city office against major city office. The goal is to get the Type A’s sufficiently wound up that they just try to become the big dog in the kennels to which they have access.
Deep thought is an add on, usually accomplished by lesser lights and consultants. My hunch is that some of the wild and crazy slide decks I have seen in the last six months are created with the help of AI.
On one hand, the consulting firm needs people, preferably people with the connections to make a personal visit to what would be an unreachable person; for instance, an elected official responsible for a really big Federal activity’s budget. Some firms may hire functional experts. I remember a fellow who in the 1970s spent his time thinking about satellite-based kinetics. Yep, the 1970s. But in general, the blue chip firm operates on stress and the fear of failure.
Now, if the information in the write up is accurate, software agents can do “work.” But consulting firms don’t typically sell “service contracts” or “subscriptions.” They sell humanoids who do what the client needs done. The official statement of work may use words like assess workflows. But, in some cases, the actual job is to nuke a threat to the person with the budget to hire a blue chip consulting firm. It looks like a workflow, but the objective is to take over a profit center. Ruthless, but most people smile and nod.
The wri8te up runs down a number of possible ways to bill for software created by the consulting firm. The ideas are straight out of the MBA playbook; for example:
- Number of human users an agent has so bill by usage tiers
- Measure “quality” and charge by quality level of the agent
- Measure the speed and “efficiency” (what’s that?) of the agent
The problem is that some organizations want to fire people. An agent is not needed. A blue chip consulting firm, shows up, gathers data, makes recommendations, executives deliberate, and then someone fires people. Another problem is that if a consulting firm which is generally what I call “faux technical” creates software, some prospects will come up with the idea, “Hey, let’s do that ourselves. I have a Claude account.”
Any high end service firm charges for its humanoids. If AI devalues the work of humanoids, how will the blue chip consulting firm make money? That’s easy to answer. Just hire another consulting firm to figure out the options.
My personal view is that some blue chip consulting firms will just go back to being old line blue chip consulting firms. Sure, there will be some AI, but it will be a utility service like the robot in the Indian restaurant that delivers mango chutney to a table.
Three quick observations:
First, knowledge value service firms are now being disrupted. The cited article demonstrates the anxiety the blue chip folks live with.
Second, blue chip firms have to find a way to replace current revenues being lost and the future revenues in the pipeline because AI is “good enough” and cheaper
Third, price pressure is coming for many firms’ bread-and-butter engagements. Who needs a blue chip company? There is the free Chinese open source LLMs ready to go. Sure, they may phone home. A bungled implementation may have other consequences, but we have these tech people, let them figure it out.
Net net: The “news” in this write up is that blue chip consulting firms may be singing the blues for a while.
Stephen E Arnold, February 25, 2026
Brittany Kaiser Is a TON: A Pointer to Telegram Notes
February 17, 2026
An item from Telegram News. A dinobaby is filling his time. The Telegram items are at this location. I post information that did not fit into my new book “The Telegram Labyrinth.” I use a “note” format because I don’t want to lose track of certain items of information.
I posted a bit more information about the president of AlphaTON Capital. For those are not clued into the names of Russian financial entities ATON refers to a well-known bank. This could be a coincidence, of course. The ticker symbol for AlphaTON Capital is NASDAQ:ATON. Yep, another coincidence or maybe it might possibly be an inside joke or a signal for certain people. I don’t know. “Brittany Kaiser Is a TON” presents some basic information about her background before she became the CEO of this AlphaTON Capital entity.
Stephen E Arnold, February 17, 2026
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