Baby Naming: The AI Use Case
June 17, 2025
This is one way to use smart software, we suppose. Writer Amanda Smith at CNet reveals, “I Used AI to Brainstorm Baby Names. I Liked 1 Out of Every 10 Suggestions It Had.” While we are happy Smith and her wife are closing in on the perfect name, we are intrigued by something else this process reveals: the information ChatGPT gathers about users and the conclusions it draws. Smith writes:
“It’s best to log in to the chatbot, rather than just using the main search, so that ChatGPT can connect to its past history about you (ChatGPT shared some revealing insights about me when I asked it recently). This way, it’s not starting from scratch, and knows what kind of things you like.”
Not creepy at all. According to Smith’s screenshot, the chatbot prefaced its list with this observation:
“Based on what I know about you – a thoughtful, well-traveled, creative soul with a love for stories, global perspective, poetic yet grounded sensibilities, and a desire to raise a child who feels deeply wanted and connected—here are 10 boy baby names you might like.”
How insightful. When Smith asked where it got the idea to suggest one specific name, ChatGPT elaborated:
“You didn’t mention Cassian explicitly before – but the name fits your overall sensibility so well that I pulled it from a blend of cues you’ve given me over time. Here’s the thinking behind it:
- Your tone and taste lean literary, poetic, and soulful – you love Franzen, Yanagihara, and coming-of-age stories with depth.
- Your personal values (creative, worldly, introspective, emotionally intelligent) along with names that feel storied and thoughtful.
- Names like Atlas and Finn [names Smith had told the bot she liked] signal you like modern, adventurous, slightly offbeat names with mythology, travel, or narrative resonance.
- Your interest in cultural storytelling and spirituality made me think of names that carry historical or philosophical layers – Cassian being both the name of an early Christian monk and a name with a lyrical, almost cinematic feel.
Basically, Cassian hits that sweet spot between intellectual and emotive, rare but not strange – a name I imagined someone like you might already love.”
We are not sure whether Smith is an “Andor” fan, but we suspect more than a few of her son’s peers will be dubbed Cassian. Just an observation.
The above is quite the profile ChatGPT has built based on one user’s history of interactions. Granted, the bot’s list was not perfect. Some of the names were just too “out there,” Smith reports. The AI also seemed to think she’d prefer names from literature, which is not quite right. But those are minor errors, ones the bot may have already corrected. While Smith and others seem comfortable with this level of familiarity, some might find it alarming. One can imagine a few uses for such a dossier that are less benign than baby name suggestions.
Cynthia Murrell, June 17, 2025
Proton Move: What about the TON Foundation?
June 17, 2025
Surveillance laws are straight out of dystopian novels and they’ve become a reality. Proton mail is a popular alternative to Gmail and in response to a controversial spying bill they’re not happy says TechRadar: “"We Would Be Less Confidential Than Google" – Proton Threatens To Quit Switzerland Over New Surveillance Law."
Switzerland’s new surveillance law would require all social networks, VPNs, and messaging apps to identity and retain user data. Currently only mobile networks and ISPs are only required to do this. Proton mail provides users with VPN and encrypted email services. They’re not happy about this potential new law and they’ve threatened to leave Switzerland.
Proton’s CEO said:
“In an interview with RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse) on May 13, 2025, Proton CEO Andy Yen slammed the proposed amendment as a ‘major violation of the right to privacy’ that will also harm the country’s reputation and its ability to compete on an international level. ‘This revision attempts to implement something that has been deemed illegal in the EU and the United States. The only country in Europe with a roughly equivalent law is Russia,’ said Yen…. ‘’I think we would have no choice but to leave Switzerland,’ said Yen. ‘The law would become almost identical to the one in force today in Russia. It’s an untenable situation. We would be less confidential as a company in Switzerland than Google, based in the United States. So it’s impossible for our business model.’”
The new law would add three new types of information and two types of monitoring. Other tech companies and leaders are against the law.
Switzerland is the bastion of neutrality in Europe. In Zug, Switzerland, the TON Foundation (aka ONF and The Open Network Foundation) works to build support for Telegram’s blockchain, its Telegram-developed crypto currency, and its realigned management team. Will Swiss regulators take a more proactive approach to this interesting non-governmental organization?
Here’s a left-field idea: What if the Proton is a dry-run for some Telegram-related action?
Whitney Grace, June 17, 2025
Professor Marcus, You Missed One Point about the Apple Reasoning Paper
June 16, 2025
An opinion essay written by a dinobaby who did not rely on smart software but for the so-so cartoon.
The intern-fueled Apple academic paper titled “The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity” has caused a stir. An interesting analysis of the responses to this tour de force is “Seven Replies to the Viral Apple Reasoning Paper – and Why They Fall Short.” Professor Gary Marcus in his analysis identifies categories of reactions to the Apple document.
In my opinion, these are, and I paraphrase with abandon:
- Human struggle with complex problems; software does too
- Smart software needs lots of computation so deliver a good enough output that doesn’t cost too much
- The paper includes an intern’s work because recycling and cheap labor are useful to busy people
- Bigger models are better because that’s what people do in Texas
- System can solve some types of problems and fail at others
- Limited examples because the examples require real effort
- The paper tells a reader what is already known: Smart software can be problematic because it is probabilistic, not intelligent.
I look at the Apple paper from a different point of view.
The challenge for Apple has been for more than a year to make smart software with its current limitations work reasonably well. Apple’s innovation in smart software has been the somewhat flawed SIRI (sort of long in the tooth) and the formulation of a snappy slogan “Apple Intelligence.”
This individual is holding a “cover your a**” document. Thanks, You.com. Good enough given your constraints, guard rails, and internal scripts.
The job of a commercial enterprise is to create something useful and reasonably clever to pull users to a product. Apple failed. Other companies have rolled out products making use of smart software as it currently is. One of the companies with a reasonably good product is OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Another is Perplexity.
Apple is not in this part of the smart software game. Apple has failed to use “as is” software in a way that adds some zing to the firm’s existing products. Apple has failed, just as it failed with the weird googles, its push into streaming video, and the innovations for the “new” iPhone. Changing case colors and altering an interface to look sort of like Microsoft’s see-through approach are not game changers. Labeling software by the year of release does not make me want to upgrade.
What is missing from the analysis of the really important paper that says, “Hey, this smart software has big problems. The whole house of LLM cards is wobbling in the wind”?
The answer is, “The paper is a marketing play.” The best way to make clear that Apple has not rolled out AI is because the current technology is terrible. Therefore, we need more time to figure out how to do AI well with crappy tools and methods not invented at Apple.
I see the paper as pure marketing. The timing of the paper’s release is marketing. The weird colors of the charts are marketing. The hype about the paper itself is marketing.
Anyone who has used some of the smart software tools knows one thing: The systems make up stuff. Everyone wants the “next big thing.” I think some of the LLM capabilities can be quite useful. In the coming months and years, smart software will enable useful functions beyond giving students a painless way to cheat, consultants a quick way to appear smart in a very short time, and entrepreneurs a way to vibe code their way into a job.
Apple has had one job: Find a way to use the available technology to deliver something novel and useful to its customers. It has failed. The academic paper is a “cover your a**” memo more suitable for a scared 35 year old middle manager in an advertising agency. Keep in mind that I am no professor. I am a dinobaby. In my world, an “F” is an “F.” Apple’s viral paper is an excuse for delivering something useful with Apple Intelligence. The company has delivered an illustration of why there is no Apple smart TV or Apple smart vehicle.
The paper is marketing, and it is just okay marketing.
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2025
Googley: A Dip Below Good Enough
June 16, 2025
A dinobaby without AI wrote this. Terrible, isn’t it? I did use smart software for the good enough cartoon. See, this dinobaby is adapting.
I was in Washington, DC, from June 9 to 11, 2025. My tracking of important news about the online advertising outfit was disrupted. I have been trying to catch up with new product mist, AI razzle dazzle, and faint signals of importance. The first little beep I noticed appeared in “Google’s Voluntary Buyouts Lead its Internal Restructuring Efforts.” “Ah, ha,” I thought. After decades of recruiting the smartest people in the world, the Google is dumping full time equivalents. Is this a move to become more efficient? Google has indicated that it is into “efficiency”; therefore, has the Google redefined the term? Had Google figured out that the change to tax regulations about research investments sparked a re-thing? Is Google so much more advanced than other firms, its leadership can jettison staff who choose to bail with a gentle smile and an enthusiastic wave of leadership’s hand?
The home owner evidences a surge in blood pressure. The handyman explains that the new door has been installed in a “good enough” manner. If it works for service labor, it may work for Google-type outfits too. Thanks, Sam AI-Man. Your ChatGPT came through with a good enough cartoon. (Oh, don’t kill too many dolphins, snail darters, and lady bugs today, please.)
Then I read “Google Cloud Outage Brings Down a Lot of the Internet.” Enticed by the rock solid metrics for the concept of “a lot,” I noticed this statement:
Large swaths of the internet went down on Thursday (June 12, 2025), affecting a range of services, from global cloud platform Cloudflare to popular apps like Spotify. It appears that a Google Cloud outage is at the root of these other service disruptions.
What? Google the fail over champion par excellence went down. Will the issue be blamed on a faulty upgrade? Will a single engineer who will probably be given an opportunity to find his or her future elsewhere be identified? Will Google be able to figure out what happened?
What are the little beeps my system continuously receives about the Google?
- Wikipedia gets fewer clicks than OpenAI’s ChatGPT? Where’s the Google AI in this? Answer: Reorganizing, buying out staff, and experiencing outages.
- Google rolls out more Gemini functions for Android devices. Where’s the stability and service availability for these innovations? Answer: I cannot look up the answer. Google is down.
- Where’s the revenue from online advertising as traditional Web search presents some thunderclouds? Answer: Well, that is a good question. Maybe revenues from Waymo, a deal with Databricks, or a bump in Pixel phone sales?
My view is that the little beeps may become self-amplifying. The magic of the online advertising model seems to be fading like the allure of Disneyland. When imagineering becomes imitation, more than marketing fairy dust may be required.
But what’s evident from the tiny beeps is that Google is now operating in “good enough” mode. Will it be enough to replace the Yahoo-GoTo-Overture pay-to-play approach to traffic?
Maybe Waymo is the dark horse when the vehicles are not combustible?
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2025
OpenA Ive: The Sam Altman Jive is Alive
June 16, 2025
Look out, Tim Apple, your pie may be burning. According to Fox News, “OpenAI’s $6.5B New Acquisition Signals Apple’s Biggest AI Crisis Yet.” The purchase in question? AI device startup io, founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive. “Cyber Guy” Kurt Knutsson tells us:
“This isn’t your typical business deal. It’s a collaboration between Sam Altman, who leads OpenAI, and the designer responsible for some of Apple’s most iconic products, including the iPhone and Apple Watch. Together, they want to create a new generation of AI-powered devices that could completely change how we use technology.”
Altman is trusting Ive and his team of (largely) Apple expats to propel OpenAI to the forefront of a “screenless” tech future. What, exactly, that will look like remains a mystery—a tantalizing one, if the pair has their way. Knutsson writes:
“While Altman and Ive are keeping most details secret, they have hinted at a family of AI devices that focus on seamless, intuitive interaction rather than screens. They want to create something that understands your context, adapts to your needs and helps you connect and create in new ways, all without requiring you to stare at a display. The device won’t be a phone or a pair of glasses but something entirely new that fits into your life as naturally as a MacBook or iPhone once did.”
Contrast this ambitious vision with Apple’s current position as a relative laggard in the AI field. Unlike Google, which tried to overtake Apple on the same AI racetrack, OpenAI plans to blaze a new path. Not only is the firm working on a new paradigm, it hopes to rapidly overtake the market when it gets there. We learn:
“OpenAI’s ambition is huge. In fact, they want to ship 100 million units faster than any company has ever done with a new product, which shows just how big their vision is.”
Will Apple be able to weather this innovation assault? Will tech devices soon ditch the display? Will OpenAI buy Google Chrome? Will soft AI carry the day? So many questions.
Cynthia Murrell, June 16, 2025
Brainyfone or Foneybrain?
June 16, 2025
If you spend too much time on your phone raise your hand. We’re not snoops, so we haven’t activated your device’s camera to spy on you. We’ll just affirm that you have and tell you what the BBC wrote: “How Mobile Phones Have Changed Our Brains.” We feel guilty about being on the phone so much, but it’s a very convenient tool.
Adults check their phone on average 344 times a day-once every four minutes. YIKES! We use our phones to complete a task and that leads to other activities like checking email, visiting social media, etc. Our neural pathways are being restructured to rely on phones. Here’s what it does:
“As you might expect, with our societal dependence on devices increasing rapidly every year, the research struggles to keep up. What we do know is that the simple distraction of checking a phone or seeing a notification can have negative consequences. This isn’t very surprising; we know that, in general, multitasking impairs memory and performance. One of the most dangerous examples is phone use while driving. One study found that merely speaking on the phone, not texting, was enough to make drivers slower to react on the road. It’s true for everyday tasks that are less high-stakes, too. Simply hearing a notification "ding" made participants of another study perform far worse on a task – almost as badly as participants who were speaking or texting on the phone during the task.”
Phones don’t contribute entirely to brain drain. The article did report on a study that did support the theory phones atrophy memory. Another study supported that phones helped improve memory when participants were allowed to make notes with their phone.
The articles makes a thought-provoking assertion:
“Individuals who think that our brains have "limited" resources (such as that resisting one temptation makes it harder to resist the next) are indeed more likely to exhibit this phenomenon in testing. But for those who think that the more we resist temptation, the more we’re strengthening the capacity to keep resisting temptation – that our brains, in other words, have unlimited resources. Exerting self-control or mental fatigue on one task doesn’t negatively affect their performance on the next one.
More fascinatingly still, whether we have a limited or non-limited view of the brain may be largely cultural – and that Western countries like the US may be more likely to think the mind is limited compared to other cultures, such as India.”
We’re not as limited as we think we are and the brain we adapt to mobile devices. However, it’s still healthy to get off your phones.
Whitney Grace, June 16, 2025
Up for a Downer: The Limits of Growth… Baaaackkkk with a Vengeance
June 13, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
Where were you in 1972? Oh, not born yet. Oh, hanging out in the frat house or shopping with sorority pals? Maybe you were working at a big time consulting firm?
An outfit known as Potomac Associates slapped its name on a thought piece with some repetitive charts. The original work evolved from an outfit contributing big ideas. The Club of Rome lassoed William W. Behrens, Dennis and Donella Meadows, and Jørgen Randers to pound data into the then-state-of-the-art World3 model allegedly developed by Jay Forrester at MIT. (Were there graduate students involved? Of course not.)
The result of the effort was evidence that growth becomes unsustainable and everything falls down. Business, government systems, universities, etc. etc. Personally I am not sure why the idea that infinite growth with finite resources will last forever was a big deal. The idea seems obvious to me. I was able to get my little hands on a copy of the document courtesy of Dominique Doré, the super great documentalist at the company which employed my jejune and naive self. Who was I too think, “This book’s conclusion is obvious, right?” Was I wrong. The concept of hockey sticks that had handles to the ends of the universe was a shocker to some.
The book’s big conclusion is the focus of “Limits to Growth Was Right about Collapse.” Why? I think the idea that the realization is a novel one to those who watched their shares in Amazon, Google, and Meta zoom to the sky. Growth is unlimited, some believed. The write up in “The Next Wave,” an online newsletter or information service happily quotes an update to the original Club of Rome document:
This improved parameter set results in a World3 simulation that shows the same overshoot and collapse mode in the coming decade as the original business as usual scenario of the LtG standard run.
Bummer. The kiddie story about Chicken Little had an acorn plop on its head. Chicken Little promptly proclaimed in a peer reviewed academic paper with non reproducible research and a YouTube video:
The sky is falling.
But keep in mind that the kiddie story is fiction. Humans are adept at survival. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs captures the spirit of species. Will life as modern CLs perceive it end?
I don’t think so. Without getting to philosophical, I would point to Gottlief Fichte’s thesis, antithesis, synthesis as a reasonably good way to think about change (gradual and catastrophic). I am not into philosophy so when life gives you lemons, one can make lemonade. Then sell the business to a local food service company.
Collapse and its pal chaos create opportunities. The sky remains.
The cited write up says:
Economists get over-excited when anyone mentions ‘degrowth’, and fellow-travelers such as the Tony Blair Institute treat climate policy as if it is some kind of typical 1990s political discussion. The point is that we’re going to get degrowth whether we think it’s a good idea or not. The data here is, in effect, about the tipping point at the end of a 200-to-250-year exponential curve, at least in the richer parts of the world. The only question is whether we manage degrowth or just let it happen to us. This isn’t a neutral question. I know which one of these is worse.
See de-growth creates opportunities. Chicken Little was wrong when the acorn beaned her. The collapse will be just another chance to monetize. Today is Friday the 13th. Watch out for acorns and recycled “insights.”
Stephen E Arnold, June 13, 2025
Just Cheat Your Way Through Life: Hey, It Is 2025. Get with It, Loser
June 13, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
I am a dinobaby. I lived in Campinas, Brazil. The power was on and off most days of the week. Mostly off, though. My family in the 1950s was one of the few American units in that town. My father planned for my education. I attended the local school for a few weeks. Then the director sent me home. The school was not set up for non-Portuguese speakers. There were a few missionaries in Campinas, and one of them became my Calvert Course tutor. He went to visit a smaller town, tangled with a snake, and died. That meant that I had to read the World Books my father bought as a replacement for the years of schooling I missed.
Bummer. No ChatGPT. Not much of anything except reading the turgid prose of the World Books and answering questions my mother and father presented for the section I read that day. “What was the capital of Tasmania?” I answered, “Hobart.” I guess that meant I passed. So it went for several years.
What would I have done if I had a laptop, electricity, and an Internet connection? I can tell you straight away that I would have let the smart software do my homework. Skip the reading. Let ChatGPT, You.com, Venice.ai, or some similar system do the work. I had a leather soccer (football) and the locals let me play even though I sucked.
When I read “AI Cheating Is So Out of Hand In America’s Schools That the Blue Books Are Coming Back,” I immediately sat down and wrote this blog post. I don’t need smart software, thank you. I have access to it and other magical computer software. I actually like doing research, analysis, and critical thinking. I am happy when someone tells me I am wrong, uninformed, or off base. I take note, remember the input, and try not to make the same mistake again.
But the reality of today is that smart software is like the World Books my parents made me read, memorize facts, and answer questions based on whatever baloney those volumes contained. AI is here; education has changed; and most students are not going to turn their backs on smart software, speed, and elimination of what is for most people the painful process of learning.
People are not stupid. Most just stop learning anything they don’t absolutely have to master. Now why learn anything? Whip out the smart phone, punch the icon for smart software, and let the system do the thinking.
The write up says:
… as AI tears through America’s elite educational system, lobotomizing tomorrow’s young leaders as it goes, could it be that blue books have been refashioned from a villain of the pre-AI age to a hero for our algorithmically-poisoned times? More and more, it seems like they’re the dark knight that America’s illiterate masses needs. The Journal notes that Roaring Spring Paper Products, the family-owned paper company that produces a majority of the blue books that are sold on college campuses, admits that the new AI era has ironically been good for its business.
Nifty. Lobotomize: I wonder if the author of the article knows exactly how unpredictable the procedure was and probably still is in some remote part of the modern world. Will using LLMs make people stupider? No, what makes people stupider is the inability, the motivation, and the curiosity required to learn. Doom scrolling is popular because young people are learning to follow trends, absorb video techniques, and learn how to “do” their fingernails. These may be more important than my knowing that the longest snake known when the World Books were published was over 20 feet long, specifically, the reticulated python. (Thank goodness, the snake lived in Indonesia, not Brazil.)
The write up says:
Indeed, if the return of pen and paper is a promising sign, America’s educators aren’t out of the woods yet—not even close. A recent survey found that 89% of college students had admitted to using ChatGPT to complete a homework assignment. AI-detection tools designed to spot cheating also routinely fail. Increasingly, America’s youth seem to view their educations as a high-stakes video game to be algorithmically juked. In short, more drastic measures (like the formulation of new laws and regulations around AI use) may need to be taken if the onset of America’s aggressive stupidification is to be halted.
My personal view is that a cultural shift has taken place. People don’t want to “work.” Families are no longer nuclear; they are not one mother, one father, and 2.4 children and maybe a dog, probably a boxer or a Labrador. Students no longer grab a book; they only have two hands and both are required to operate a mobile phone or a laptop. Teachers are no longer authority figures; they are viewed as problems, particularly by upper middle class and wealthy parents or parent as the case may be.
The blue book thing is mildly interesting, but I am not sure these are a solution. Students cannot read or write cursive; they print. This means that answers will be shorter, maybe like social media posts. If a student has a knack for art, icons may be included next to an insightful brief statement. A happy face signals the completion of the test. I would, if I were 13, draw a star and a calligraphic “A” on the front of my blue book.
What type of world will this educational milieu deliver? To be honest, I am glad I am old and will die before I have to experience to much of the LLM world. 
Stephen E Arnold, June 13, 2025
Another Vote for the Everything App
June 13, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
An online information service named 9 to 5 Mac published an essay / interview summary titled “Nothing CEO says Apple No Longer Creative; Smartphone Future Is a Single App.” The write up focuses on the “inventor / coordinator” of the OnePlus mobile devices and the Nothing Phone. The key point of the write up is the idea that at some point in the future, one will have a mobile device and a single app, the everything app.
The article quotes a statement Carl Pei (the head of the Nothing Phone) made to another publication; to wit:
I believe that in the future, the entire phone will only have one app—and that will be the OS. The OS will know its user well and will be optimized for that person […] The next step after data-driven personalization, in my opinion, is automation. That is, the system knows you, knows who you are, and knows what you want. For example, the system knows your situation, time, place, and schedule, and it suggests what you should do. Right now, you have to go through a step-by-step process of figuring out for yourself what you want to do, then unlocking your smartphone and going through it step by step. In the future, your phone will suggest what you want to do and then do it automatically for you. So it will be agentic and automated and proactive.
This type of device will arrive in seven to 10 years.
For me, the notion of an everything app or a super app began in 2010, but I am not sure who first mentioned the phrase to me. I know that WeChat, the Chinese everything app, became available in 2011. The Chinese government was aware at some point that an “everything” app would make surveillance, social scoring, and filtering much easier. The “let many approved flowers bloom” approach of the Apple and Google online app stores was inefficient. One app was more direct, and I think the A to B approach to tracking and blocking online activity makes sense to many in the Middle Kingdom. The trade off of convenience for a Really Big Brother was okay with citizens of China. Go along and get along may have informed the uptake of WeChat.
Now the everything app seems like a sure bet. The unknown is which outstanding technology firm will prevail. The candidates are WeChat, Telegram, X.com, Sam Altman’s new venture, or a surprise player. Will other apps (the not everything apps from restaurant menus to car washes) survive? Sure. But if Sam AI-Man is successful with his Ive smart device and his stated goal of buying the Chrome browser from the Google catch on, the winner may be a CEO who was fired by his board, came back, and cleaned out those who did not jump on the AI-Man’s bandwagon.
That’s an interesting thought. It is Friday the 13th, Google. You too Microsoft. And Apple. How could I have forgotten Tim Cook and his team of AI adepts?
Stephen E Arnold, June 13, 2025
Will Amazon Become the Bell Labs of Consumer Products?
June 12, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
I did some work at Bell Labs and then at the Judge Greene crafted Bellcore (Bell Communications Research). My recollection is that the place was quiet, uneventful, and had a lousy cafeteria. The Cherry Hill Mall provided slightly better food, just slightly. Most of the people were normal compared to the nuclear engineers at Halliburton and my crazed colleagues at the blue chip consulting firm dumb enough to hire me before I became a dinobaby. (Did you know that security at the Cherry Hill Mall had a gold cart to help Bell Labs’ employees find their vehicle? The reason? Bell Labs hired staff to deal with this recuring problem. Yes, Howard, Alan, and I lost our car when we went to lunch. I finally started parking in the same place and wrote the door exit and lamp number down in my calendar. Problem solved!)
Is Amazon like that? On a visit to Amazon, I formed an impression somewhat different from Bell Labs, Halliburton, and the consulting firm. The staff were not exactly problematic. I just recall having to repeat and explain things. Amazon struck me as an online retailer with money and challenges in handling traffic. The people with whom I interacted when I visited with several US government professionals were nice and different from the technical professionals at the organizations which paid me cash money.
Is this important? Yes. I don’t think of Amazon as particularly innovative. When it wanted to do open source search, it hired some people from Lucid Imagination, now Lucid Works. Amazon just did what other Lucene/Solr large-scale users did: Index content and allow people to run queries. Not too innovative in my book. Amazon also industrialized back office and warehouse projects. These are jobs that require finding existing products and consultants, asking them to propose “solutions,” picking one, and getting the workflow working. Again, not particularly difficult when compared to the holographic memory craziness at Bell Labs or the consulting firm’s business of inventing consumer products for companies in the Fortune 500 that would sell and get the consulting firm’s staggering fees paid in cash promptly. In terms of the nuclear engineering work, Amazon was and probably still is, not in the game. Some of the rocket people are, but the majority of the Amazon workers are in retail, digital plumbing, and creating dark pattern interfaces. This is “honorable” work, but it is not invention in the sense of slick Monte Carlo code cranked out by Halliburton’s Dr. Julian Steyn or multi-frequency laser technology for jamming more data through a fiber optic connection.
I read “Amazon Taps Xbox Co-Founder to Lead new Team Developing Breakthrough Consumer Products.” I asked myself, “Is Amazon now in the Bell Labs’ concept space? The write up tries to answer my question, stating:
The ZeroOne team is spread across Seattle, San Francisco and Sunnyvale, California, and is focused on both hardware and software projects, according to job postings from the past month. The name is a nod to its mission of developing emerging product ideas from conception to launch, or “zero to one.” Amazon has a checkered history in hardware, with hits including the Kindle e-reader, Echo smart speaker and Fire streaming sticks, as well as flops like the Fire Phone, Halo fitness tracker and Glow kids teleconferencing device. Many of the products emerged from Lab126, Amazon’s hardware research and development unit, which is based in Silicon Valley.
Okay, the Fire Phone (maybe Foney) and the Glow thing for kids? Innovative? I suppose. But to achieve success in raw innovation like the firms at which I was an employee? No, Amazon is not in that concept space. Amazon is more comfortable cutting a deal with Elastic instead of “inventing” something like Google’s Transformer or Claude Shannon’s approach to extracting a signal from noise. Amazon sells books and provides an almost clueless interface to managing those on the Kindle eReader.
The write up says (and I believer everything I read on the Internet):
Amazon has pulled in staffers from other business units that have experience developing innovative technologies, including its Alexa voice assistant, Luna cloud gaming service and Halo sleep tracker, according to LinkedIn profiles of ZeroOne employees. The head of a projection mapping startup called Lightform that Amazon acquired is helping lead the group. While Amazon is expanding this particular corner of its devices group, the company is scaling back other areas of the sprawling devices and services division.
Innovation is a risky business. Amazon sells stuff and provides online access with uptime of 98 or 99 percent. It does not “do” innovation. I wrote a book chapter about Amazon’s blockchain patents. What happened to that technology, some of which struck me as promising and sort of novel given the standards for US patents? The answer, based on the information I have seen since I wrote the book chapter, is, “Not much.” In less time, Telegram dumped out dozens of “inventions.” These have ranged from sticking crypto wallets into every Messenger users’ mini app to refining the bot technology to display third-party, off-Telegram Web sites on the fly for about 900 million Messenger users.
Amazon hit a dead end with Alexa and something called Halo.
When an alleged criminal organization operating as an “Airbnb” outfit with no fixed offices and minimal staff can innovate and Amazon with its warehouses cannot, there’s a useful point of differentiation in my mind.
The write up reports:
Earlier this month, Amazon laid off about 100 of the group’s employees. The job cuts included staffers working on Alexa and Amazon Kids, which develops services for children, as well as Lab126, according to public filings and people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. More than 50 employees were laid off at Amazon’s Lab126 facilities in Sunnyvale, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filings in California.
Okay. Fire up a new unit. Will the approach work? I hope for stakeholders’ and employees’ sake, Amazon hits a home run. But in the back of my mind, innovation is difficult. Quite special people are needed. The correct organizational set up or essentially zero set up is required. Then the odds are usually against innovation, which, if truly novel, evokes resistance. New is threatening.
Can the Bezos bulldozer shift into high gear and do the invention thing? I don’t know but I have some nagging doubts.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2025
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