AI-Fueled Buggy Whip Executive Cannot Be Replaced by AI: A Case Study
May 2, 2025
I read about a very optimistic executive who owned buggy whip companies in the US. One day a horseless carriage, today known as a Tesla, raced past this office. The person telling me the story remembered the anecdote from her required reading in her first year MBA strategic thinking class. The owner of the buggy whip company, she said. “Those newfangled machines will not replace the horse.”
The modern version of this old chestnut appears in “Marc Andreessen Says One Job Is Mostly Safe From AI: Venture Capitalist.” I hope Mr. Andreessen is correct. The write up states:
In the future, AI will apparently be able to do everybody’s job—except Marc’s.
Here’s the logic, according to the write up:
Andreessen described his job as a nuanced combination of “intangible” skills,
including psychological analysis of the entrepreneurs he works with: “A lot of it
is psychological analysis, like, ‘Who are these people?’ ‘How do they react under
pressure?’ ‘How do you keep them from falling apart?’ ‘How do you keep them
from going crazy?’ ‘How do you keep from going crazy yourself?’ You know, you
end up being a psychologist half the time.” “So, it is possible—I don’t want to be definitive—but it’s possible that that is quite literally timeless. And when, you know, when the AI is doing everything else, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing.”
I found this paragraph from the original story one that will spark some interest; to wit:
Andreessen’s powers of self-delusion are well known. His Techno-
Optimist’s Manifesto, published a few years ago, was another great window into
a mind addled by too much cash and too little common sense. If you’re one of
Silicon Valley’s Masters of the Universe, I guess having weird, self-serving views
just comes with the territory.
Several observations:
- In my opinion, some VCs will continue to use AI. Through use and greater familiarity, the technology will gain some traction. At some point, AI will handle jobs once done by wild-eyed people hungry for riches.
- Start up VCs may rely upon AI for investment decisions, not just gaining through the business plans of fund seekers. If those “experiments” show promise, whoever owns the smart VC may develop a next generation VC business. Ergo: Marc can stay, but he won’t do anything.
- Someone may stumble upon an AI VC workflow process that works faster, better, and more efficiently. If that firm emerges, Mr. Andreessen can become the innovator identified with digital horse accelerators.
How does one say “Giddy up” in AI-system-to-AI-system communication lingo? Answer maybe: Dweep, dweep, dupe?
Stephen E Arnold, May 2, 2025
Mobile Phones? Really?
May 2, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby himself.
I read one of those “modern” scientific summaries in the UK newspaper, The Guardian. Yep, that’s a begging for dollars outfit which reminds me that I have read eight stories since January 1, 2025. I am impressed with the publisher’s cookie wizardry. Too bad it does not include the other systems I use in the course of my day.
The article which caught my attention and sort of annoyed me is “Older People Who Use Smartphones Have Lower Rates of Cognitive Decline.” I haven’t been in school since I abandoned my PhD to join Halliburton Nuclear in Washington, DC in the early 1970s. I don’t remember much of my undergraduate work, including classes about setting up “scientific studies” or avoiding causation problems.
I do know that I am 80 years old and that smartphones are not the center of my information world. Am I, therefore, in cognitive decline? I suppose you should ask those who will be in my OSINT lecture this coming Friday (April 18, 2025) or those hearing my upcoming talks at a US government cyber fraud conference. My hunch is that whether the people listening to me think I am best suited for drooling in an old age home or some weird nut job fooling people is best accomplished by some research that involves sample selection, objective and interview data, and benchmarking.
The Guardian article skips right to the reason I am able to walk and chew gum at the same time without requiring [a] dentures, [b] a walker, [c] an oxygen tank, or [d] a mobile smartphone.
But, no, the write up says:
Fears that smartphones, tablets and other devices could drive dementia in later life have been challenged by research that found lower rates of cognitive decline in older people who used the technology. An analysis of published studies that looked at technology use and mental skills in more than 400,000 older adults found that over-50s who routinely used digital devices had lower rates of cognitive decline than those who used them less.
Okay, why use one smartphone. Buy two. Go whole hog. Install TOR and cruise the Dark Web and figure out why Ahmia.fi is filtering results. Download apps by the dozens and use them to get mental stimulation. I highly recommend Hamster Kombat, Act 2. Plus, one must log on to Facebook — the hot spot for seniors to check out grandchildren and keep up with obituaries — and immerse oneself in mental stimulation.
The write up says:
It is unclear whether the technology staves off mental decline, or whether people with better cognitive skills simply use them more, but the scientists say the findings question the claim that screen time drives what has been called “digital dementia”.
That’s slick. Digital dementia.
My thoughts about this wishy washy correlation are:
- Some “scientists” are struggling to get noticed for their research and grab smartphones and data to establish that these technological gems keep one’s mind sharp. Yeah, meh!
- A “major real news” outfit writes up the “research” illustrates a bit of what I call “information stretching.” Like spandex tights, making the “facts” convert a blob into an acceptable shape has replaced actual mental work
- The mental decline thing tells me more about the researchers and the Guardian’s editorial approach.
My view is that engagement with people, devices, and ideas trump the mobile phone angle. People who face physical deterioration are going to demonstrate assorted declines. If the phone helps some people, great.
I am just tired of the efforts to explain the upsides and downsides of mobile devices. These gizmos are part of the datasphere in which people live. Put a person in solitary confinement with sound deadening technology and that individual will suffer some quite sporty declines. A rich and stimulating environment is more important than a gizmo with Telegram or WhatsApp. Maybe an old timer will become the next crypto currency trading tsar?
Net net: Those undergraduate classes in statistics, psychology, and logic might be relevant, particularly to those who became thumb typing and fast scrollers at a young age. I am a dinobaby and maybe you will attend one of my lectures. Then you can tell me that I do what I do because I have a smartphone. Actually I have four. That’s why the Guardian’s view count is wrong about how often I look at the outfit’s articles.
Stephen E Arnold, May 2, 2025
Will UK Censorship Pressure Spreads to the US
May 2, 2025
It seems we can add an item to the list of successful American exports: censorship. “Librarians in UK Increasingly Asked to Remove Books, as Influence of US Pressure Groups Spreads,” reveals the Guardian. Oh goodie. The cloud of unknowing is becoming more widespread. The UK does not get nearly as many book challenges as the US and, unlike here, most have come from individuals or small groups. That may be changing. We learn:
“Evidence suggests that the work of US action groups is reaching UK libraries too. Alison Hicks, an associate professor in library and information studies at UCL, interviewed 10 UK-based school librarians who had experienced book challenges. One ‘spoke of finding propaganda from one of these groups left on her desk’, while another ‘was directly targeted by one of these groups’. Respondents ‘also spoke of being trolled by US pressure groups on social media, for example when responding to free book giveaways’. It is ‘certainly possible that the scale of censorship we’re seeing in the US will influence the debate over here’, said Jewell.”
According to one 2024 study, UK challenges seems to mostly target LGBTQ+ material. US censorship is more inclusive, targeting content related to race, ethnicity, and social justice as well as LGBTQ+ issues. A 2023 study, however, found UK censorship targeting race and empire as well as LGBTQ+ topics. Whichever the case, librarians and the tomes they love are under attack in both countries. That’s the US for you—spreading our nation’s ideals around the world.
Cynthia Murrell, May 2, 2025
Outsourced AI Works Very Well, Thank You
May 2, 2025
Tech experts predict that AI will automate all jobs and make humanity obsolete. If that’s the case then why was so-called AI outsourced? Engadget reports how one “Tech Founder Charged With Fraud For ‘AI’ That Was Secretly Overseas Contract Workers.”
The tech founder in question is Albert Sangier and the US Department of Justice indicated him on misleading clients with Nate, his financial technology platform. Sangier founded Nate in 2018, he raised $40 million from investors, and he claimed that it could give shoppers a universal checkout application powered by AI. The transactions were actually completed by human contractors located in Romania, the Philippines, and bots.
Sangier deception was first noted in 2022:
“ ‘This case follows reporting by The Information in 2022 that cast light on Nate’s use of human labor rather than AI. Sources told the publication that during 2021, “the share of transactions Nate handled manually rather than automatically ranged between 60 percent and 100 percent.’”
Sangier isn’t the only “tech leader” who duplicitously pretends that human workers are actually an AI algorithm or chatbot. More bad actors will do this scam and they’ll get more creative hiding their steps.
Whitney Grace, May 2, 2025
Another Grousing Googler: These Wizards Need Time to Ponder Ethical Issues
May 1, 2025
No AI. This old dinobaby just plods along, delighted he is old and this craziness will soon be left behind. What about you?
My view of the Google is narrow. Sure, I got money to write about some reports about the outfit’s technology. I just did my job and moved on to more interesting things than explaining the end of relevance and how flows of shaped information destroys social structures.
This Googzilla is weeping because one of the anointed is not happy with the direction the powerful creature is headed. Googzilla asks itself, “How can we replace weak and mentally weak humans with smart software more quickly?” Thanks, OpenAI. Good enough like much of technology these days.
I still enjoy reading about the “real” Google written by a “real” Googlers and Xooglers (these are former Googlers who now work at wonderfully positive outfits like emulating the Google playbook).
The article in front of me this morning (Sunday, April20, 2025) is titled “I’ve Worked at Google for Decades. I’m Sickened by What It’s Doing.” The subtitle tells me a bit about the ethical spine of the author, but you may find it enervating. As a dinobaby, I am not in tune with the intellectual, ethical, and emotional journeys of Googlers and Xooglers. Here’s the subtitle:
For the first time, I feel driven to speak publicly, because our company is now powering state violence across the globe.
Let’s take a look at what this Googler asserts about the estimable online advertising outfit. Keep in mind that the fun-loving Googzilla has been growing for more than two decades, and the creature is quite spritely despite some legal knocks and Timnit Gebru-type pains. Please, read the full “Sacramentum Paenitentiae.” (I think this is a full cycle of paenitentia, but as a dinobaby, I don’t have the crystalline intelligence of a Googler or Xoogler.)
Here’s statement one I noted. The author contrasts the good old days of St. Paul Buchheit’s “Don’t be evil” enjoinder to the present day’s Sundar & Prabhakar’s Comedy Show this way:
But if my overwhelming feeling back then was pride, my feeling now is a very different one: heartbreak. That’s thanks to years of deeply troubling leadership decisions, from Google’s initial foray into military contracting with Project Maven, to the corporation’s more recent profit-driven partnerships like Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion AI and cloud computing contract with the Israeli military that has powered Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Yeah, smart software that wants to glue cheese on pizzas running autonomous weapons strikes me as an interesting concept. At least the Ukrainian smart weapons are home grown and mostly have a human or two in the loop. The Google-type outfits are probably going to find the Ukrainian approach inefficient. The blue chip consulting firm mentality requires that these individuals be allowed to find their future elsewhere.
Here’s another snip I circled with my trusty Retro51 ball point pen:
For years, I have organized internally against Google’s full turn toward war contracting. Along with other coworkers of conscience, we have followed official internal channels to raise concerns in attempts to steer the company in a better direction. Now, for the first time in my more than 20 years of working at Google, I feel driven to speak publicly, because our company is now powering state violence across the globe, and the severity of the harm being done is rapidly escalating.
I find it interesting that it takes decades to make a decision involving morality and ethicality. These are tricky topics and must be considered. St. Augustine of Hippo took about three years (church scholars are not exactly sure and, of course, have been known to hallucinate). But this Google-certified professional required 20 years to figure out some basic concepts. Is this judicious or just an indication of how tough intellectual amorality is to analyze?
Let me wrap up with one final snippet.
To my fellow Google workers, and tech workers at large: If we don’t act now, we will be conscripted into this administration’s fascist and cruel agenda: deporting immigrants and dissidents, stripping people of reproductive rights, rewriting the rules of our government and economy to favor Big Tech billionaires, and continuing to power the genocide of Palestinians. As tech workers, we have a moral responsibility to resist complicity and the militarization of our work before it’s too late.
The evil-that-men-do argument. Now that’s one that will resonate with the “leadership” of Alphabet, Google, Waymo, and whatever weirdly named units Googzilla possesses, controls, and partners. As that much-loved American thinker Ralph Waldo-Emerson allegedly said:
“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”
I am not sure I want this Googler, Xoogler, or whatever on my quick recall team. Twenty years to figure out something generally about having an ethical compass and a morality meter seems like a generous amount of time. No wonder Googzilla is rushing to replace its humanoids with smart software. When that code runs on quantum computers, imagine the capabilities of the online advertising giant. It can brush aside criminal indictments. Ignore the mewing and bleating of employees. Manifest itself into one big … self, maybe sick, but is it the Googley destiny?
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2025
The EU Bumps Heads with Tech Bros
May 1, 2025
Dinobaby, here. No smart software involved unlike some outfits. I did use Sam AI-Man’s art system to produce the illustration in the blog post.
I noticed some faint signals that the European Union has bumped heads with a couple of US tech bros. The tech bros have money, users, and a do-it-my way attitude. The EU moves less quickly and likes to discuss lunch before going to lunch. The speedy delivery approach upsets stomachs of some European professionals.
The soccer player on a team sponsored by tech bros knocks over the old player and wins the ball. The problem is that the youthful, handsome, well-paid superstar gets a red card. Thanks, OpenAI. I am looking forward to your Telegram clone.
The hints of trouble appear in “Brussels Takes Action Against Google and Apple Despite Trump Threat.” The article explains that the tech bros have violated the Digital Markets Act. Some pundits have suggested that the DMA exists because of certain tech bros and their zip-zip approach to shaping monopolistic business methods.
What are the US tech bros going to do? [a] Posture, [b] output PR, [c] litigate, [d] absolutely everything possible. The answer, based on my limited understanding of how big time thinkers with money and win-at-all-costs logic business executives thing, [d].
Let’s think about how this disagreement will unfold.
First, the use of media to communicate the unfairness of a governmental entity telling a couple of tech bros they can’t race their high performance vehicles down Avenue Louise, the Ku’damm, or the Champs-Élysées. Then the outfits will output PR, lots of PR. Third, the lawyers will take flight. If there are not enough legal eagles in Europe, convocations will be whisked to Brussels and Strasbourg. The final step will open the barn door and let the animals run free.
With the diplomatic skills of a SWAT team and piles of money, the afflicted tech bros will try to get the EU to knock off the anti-tech-bro double talk. Roll over or ….?
That’s the question, “Or what?”
The afflicted tech bros are accustomed to doing what they want, using slick talk and other inducements to do exactly what they want. The “you want to move the icons on the home screen” and “you want objective search results” attitudes are likely to be somewhat ineffective.
I am not sure what the tech bros will do. France broke the wing of Telegram’s big bird. After realizing that France could put him in a depressingly over crowded prison about 16 kilometers from a five star hotel in Paris, the Telegram tech bro complied.
Will the defendants in future legal disputes with the EU show up in court to explain to the slug-like thinkers in the EU government bureau that they must do what the US tech bros want. There’s that “or” again. It is a pesky matter.
Tech bros, as Pavel Durov learned in his seven months of intensive classes in French law, the bureaucracy moves slowly and has a variety of financial levers and knobs. These can be adjusted in numerous ways. It is indeed possible that if a tech bro gets out of line, he could experience a crash course in EU systems and procedures.
The inconceivable could happen: The companies products could be constrained in some way. With each “do it our way” output, the knobs and dials can be adjusted.
Could the tie up of Ecosia and Wolfram Alpha or Swisscows offer a viable option for search? Could the Huawei-type of mobile devices replace the iPhone?
The tech bros may want to check out how Pavel Durov’s approach to business is working out.
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2025
Maps: The Google Giveth and the Google Taketh Away
May 1, 2025
Google Maps is a premiere GPS app. It’s backed up by terabytes of information that is constantly updated by realtime data. Users use Google Maps’ Timeline as a review and reminisce about past travel, but that has suddenly changed. According to Lifehacker, “Google May Have Deleted Your Timeline Data In Maps.”
A Redditor posted on the r/GooglePixel subreddit that all of their Google Maps Timeline data from over a decade disappeared. Google did warn users in 2024 that they would delete Timeline data. If users wanted to keep their Timeline data they needed to transfer it to personal devices.
The major Timeline deletion was supposed to happen in June 2025 not March when the Redditor’s data vanished. Google did acknowledge that some users have already had their Timeline data deleted.
“Google appears to be actively reaching out to affected users, so keep an eye out for an email from the company with instructions on retrieving your data—if you can. Redditor srj737 was able to retrieve their data, once Google acknowledged the situation. They had tried restoring from their backup before to no avail, but following Google’s email, the backup worked. It’s possible Google made some changes on their end to fix the feature in general, which includes both saved data as well as backup restoring, but that can’t be confirmed at this time.”
It’s not surprising that Google will delete any ancillary data that it isn’t paid to store or could potentially be stored on a user’s device. Users shouldn’t rely on the all-powerful Google to store their data forever. Also don’t always trust the cloud to do it.
Whitney Grace, May 1, 2025
Anthropic Discovers a Moral Code in Its Smart Software
April 30, 2025
No AI. This old dinobaby just plods along, delighted he is old and this craziness will soon be left behind. What about you?
With the United Arab Emirates starting to use smart software to make its laws, the idea that artificial intelligence has a sense of morality is reassuring. Who would want a person judged guilty by a machine to face incarceration, a fine, or — gulp! — worse.
“Anthropic Just Analyzed 700,000 Claude Conversations — And Found Its AI Has a Moral Code of Its Own” explains:
The [Anthropic] study examined 700,000 anonymized conversations, finding that Claude largely upholds the company’s “helpful, honest, harmless” framework while adapting its values to different contexts — from relationship advice to historical analysis. This represents one of the most ambitious attempts to empirically evaluate whether an AI system’s behavior in the wild matches its intended design.
Two philosophers watch as the smart software explains the meaning of “situational and hallucinatory ethics.” Thanks, OpenAI. I bet you are glad those former employees of yours quit. Imagine. Ethics and morality getting in the way of accelerationism.
Plus the company has “hope”, saying:
“Our hope is that this research encourages other AI labs to conduct similar research into their models’ values,” said Saffron Huang, a member of Anthropic’s Societal Impacts team who worked on the study, in an interview with VentureBeat. “Measuring an AI system’s values is core to alignment research and understanding if a model is actually aligned with its training.”
The study is definitely not part of the firm’s marketing campaign. The write up includes this quote from an Anthropic wizard:
The research arrives at a critical moment for Anthropic, which recently launched “Claude Max,” a premium $200 monthly subscription tier aimed at competing with OpenAI’s similar offering. The company has also expanded Claude’s capabilities to include Google Workspace integration and autonomous research functions, positioning it as “a true virtual collaborator” for enterprise users, according to recent announcements.
For $2,400 per year, a user of the smart software would not want to do something improper, immoral, unethical, or just plain bad. I know that humans have some difficulty defining these terms related to human behavior in simple terms. It is a step forward that software has the meanings and can apply them. And for $200 a month one wants good judgment.
Does Claude hallucinate? Is the Anthropic-run study objective? Are the data reproducible?
Hey, no, no, no. What do you expect in the dog-eat-dog world of smart software?
Here’s a statement from the write up that pushes aside my trivial questions:
The study found that Claude generally adheres to Anthropic’s prosocial aspirations, emphasizing values like “user enablement,” “epistemic humility,” and “patient wellbeing” across diverse interactions. However, researchers also discovered troubling instances where Claude expressed values contrary to its training.
Yes, pro-social. That’s a concept definitely relevant to certain prompts sent to Anthropic’s system.
Are the moral predilections consistent?
Of course not. The write up says:
Perhaps most fascinating was the discovery that Claude’s expressed values shift contextually, mirroring human behavior. When users sought relationship guidance, Claude emphasized “healthy boundaries” and “mutual respect.” For historical event analysis, “historical accuracy” took precedence.
Yes, inconsistency depending upon the prompt. Perfect.
Why does this occur? This statement reveals the depth and elegance of the Anthropic research into computer systems whose inner workings are tough for their developers to understand:
Anthropic’s values study builds on the company’s broader efforts to demystify large language models through what it calls “mechanistic interpretability” — essentially reverse-engineering AI systems to understand their inner workings. Last month, Anthropic researchers published groundbreaking work that used what they described as a “microscope” to track Claude’s decision-making processes. The technique revealed counterintuitive behaviors, including Claude planning ahead when composing poetry and using unconventional problem-solving approaches for basic math.
Several observations:
- Unlike Google which is just saying, “We are the leaders,” Anthropic wants to be the good guys, explaining how its smart software is sensitive to squishy human values
- The write up itself is a content marketing gem
- There is scant evidence that the description of the Anthropic “findings” are reliable.
Let’s slap this Anthropic software into an autonomous drone and let it loose. It will be the AI system able to make those subjective decisions. Light it up and launch.
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2025
Want Traffic from Google? Buy Ads, Lots of Ads
April 30, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby himself.
When I was working, clients and prospects would ask me, “Do I need to advertise on Google to get traffic to my Web site?” I relayed the “facts” as I understood them at the time. My answer was, “You need to buy ads from Google.”
Most of the clients wrinkled their foreheads and asked, “Why?” My answer was then and still is, “Do you think Google does things for you for free?” Since I don’t do advertising, I don’t know how my information filtered from my contacts to the people who handled these organizations’ advertising budgets. I knew that with big indexes and lots of users, only a tiny fraction of the terms and Web sites get traffic. People don’t understand that their Web site is mostly invisible and was destined to stay that way unless [a] something extraordinary appeared on a Web page and drew eyeballs or [b] the organization had to spend thousands each month on Google ads.
I thought times might be changing since I retired. Nope, advertising matters. If the information in “Temu Pulls Its US Google Shopping Ads” is accurate, Google ads matter. The article reports:
Temu completely shut off Google Shopping ads in the U.S. on April 9, with its App Store ranking subsequently plummeting from a typical third or fourth position to 58th in just three days. The company’s impression share, which measures how often their ads appear compared to eligibility, dropped sharply before disappearing completely from advertiser auction data by April 12.
Buy ads, get traffic. That was true when I was running myself ragged trying to do work, and it is true today. I would suggest that this Temu example offers some insight into what happens if apps get pulled from the Google Play Store. Whatever downloads a developer had are likely to take a hit; that is, go from hero to zero in a snap.
The article wanders into political issues which are not part of my job description. I think it is important to think in terms of findability. One can pray that one’s content is so darned compelling that people flock to a magnet site or a post. Hope springs eternal just like every baby is a genius. One can pay search engine optimization wizards to gin up traffic via white hat and black hat methods. One can just buy ads, and go with the pay-to-play method.
Am I okay with Google’s control of traffic? Sure. I don’t care if I get traffic. But others do and need traffic to stay in business. Therefore, the information about Temu is germane I think. Your baby is a genius. Believe that. Just don’t assume that traffic will automatically flow to that baby’s Web site even if you bought a domain name celebrating the birth. Just buy ads.
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2025
France And Germany Form Open Source Writing Collaboration
April 30, 2025
Open source software and AI algorithms are a match made in heaven. You can’t say the same thing about France and Germany when it comes to history, but the countries can put aside their differences (occasionally) to advance technology. The French and German governments came together to design Docs.
Docs is described as “Collaborative writing, simplified-collaborate and write in real time, without layout constraints.” I don’t know if the term “layout” refers to a writing software’s formatting or if it means limited to the constraints of writing software. It could mean either of things or something is lost in the literal translation. Ich habe keine Ahnung. Je ne c’est pas.
Docs is built on the Django Rest Framework and Nest.js. It also uses BlockNote.js and Yes (they also sponsor those text editors too). Docs can be self-hosted, has a business friendly license, and welcomes anyone to contribute to its growth either monetarily or via code). Here is what Docs offers as a writing partner:
“Docs offers an intuitive writing experience. Its minimalist interface favors content over layout, while offering the essentials: media import, offline mode and keyboard shortcuts for greater efficiency.”
So far that sounds très magnifique and ausgezeichnet! Docs also offers simple real-time collaboration. Users on a document can access the same document, see changes made live, and maintain control of the document for data security. Docs also has universal formats for exportation: OpenDocument, Word, and PDF.
A nifty feature unavailable with most writing software is the ability to organize documents into knowledge bases with subpages. This feature also comes with search and pinning capabilities.
This French and German writing collaboration sounds amazing! Break out the champagne and beer and enjoy some croissants and pretzels. This is one open source tool everyone needs!
Whitney Grace, April 30, 2025
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