Musk, Grok, and Banning: Another Burning Tesla?
June 12, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
“Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot Banned by a Quarter of European Firms” reports:
A quarter of European organizations have banned Elon Musk’s generative AI chatbot Grok, according to new research from cybersecurity firm Netskope.
I find this interesting because my own experiences with Grok have been underwhelming. My first query to Grok was, “Can you present only Twitter content?” The answer was a bunch of jabber which meant, “Nope.” Subsequent queries were less than stellar, and I moved it out of my rotation for potentially useful AI tools. Did the sample crafted by Netskope have a similar experience?
The write up says:
Grok has been under the spotlight recently for a string of blunders. They include spreading false claims about a “white genocide” in South Africa and raising doubts about Holocaust facts. Such mishaps have raised concerns about Grok’s security and privacy controls. The report said the chatbot is frequently blocked in favor of “more secure or better-aligned alternatives.”
I did not feel comfortable with Grok because of content exclusion or what I like to call willful or unintentional coverage voids. The easiest way to remove or weaponize content in the commercial database world is to exclude it. When a person searches a for fee database, the editorial policy for that service should make clear what’s in and what’s out. Filtering out is the easiest way to marginalize a concept, push down a particular entity, or shape an information stream.
The cited write up suggests that Grok is including certain content to give it credence, traction, and visibility. Assuming that an electronic information source is comprehensive is a very risky approach to assembling data.
The write up adds another consideration to smart software, which — like it or not — is becoming the new way to become informed or knowledgeable. The information may be shallow, but the notion of relying on weaponized information or systems that spy on the user presents new challenges.
The write up reports:
Stable Diffusion, UK-based Stability AI’s image generator, is the most blocked AI app in Europe, barred by 41% of organizations. The app was often flagged because of concerns around privacy or licensing issues, the report found.
How concerned should users of Grok or any other smart software be? Worries about Grok may be an extension of fear of a burning Tesla or the face of the Grok enterprise. In reality, smart software fosters the illusion of completeness, objectivity, and freshness of the information presented. Users are eager to use a tool that seems to make life easier and them appear more informed.
The risks of reliance on Grok or any other smart software include:
- The output is incomplete
- The output is weaponized or shaped by intentional or factors beyond the developers’ control
- The output is simply wrong, made up, or hallucinated
- Users who act as though shallow knowledge is sufficient for a decision.
The alleged fact that 25 percent of the Netskope sample have taken steps to marginalize Grok is interesting. That may be a positive step based on my tests of the system. However, I am concerned that the others in the sample are embracing a technology which appears to be delivering the equivalent of a sugar rush after a gym workout.
Smart software is being applied in novel ways in many situations. However, what are the demonstrable benefits other than the rather enthusiastic embrace of systems and methods known to output errors? The rejection of Grok is one interesting factoid if true. But against the blind acceptance of smart software, Grok’s down check may be little more than a person stepping away from a burning Tesla. The broader picture is that the buildings near the immolating vehicle are likely to catch on fire.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2025
Developers: Try to Kill ‘Em Off and They Come Back Like Giant Hogweeds
June 12, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
Developers, which probably extends to “coders” and “programmers”, have been an employee category of note for more than a half century. Even the esteemed Institute of Advanced Study enforced some boundaries between the “real” thinking mathematicians and the engineers who fooled around in the basement with a Stone Age computer.
Giant hogweeds can have negative impacts on humanoids who interact with them. Some say the same consequences ensue when accountants, lawyers, and MBAs engage in contact with programmers: Skin irritation and possibly blindness.
“The Recurring Cycle of ‘Developer Replacement’ Hype” addresses this boundary. The focus is on smart software which allegedly can do heavy-lifting programming. One of my team (Howard, the recipient of the old and forgotten Information Industry Association award for outstanding programming) is skeptical that AI can do what he does. I think that our work on the original MARS system which chugged along on the AT&T IBM MVS installation in Piscataway in the 1980s may have been a stretch for today’s coding wonders like Claude and ChatGPT. But who knows? Maybe these smart systems would have happily integrated Information Dimensions database with the MVS and allowed the newly formed Baby Bells to share certain data and “charge” one another for those bits? Trivial work now I suppose in the wonderful world of PL/1, Assembler, and the Basis “GO” instruction in one of today’s LLMs tuned to “do” code.
The write up points out that the tension between bean counters, MBAs and developers follows a cycle. Over time, different memes have surfaced suggesting that there was a better, faster, and cheaper way to “do” code than with programmers. Here are the “movements” or “memes” the author of the cited essay presents:
- No code or low code. The idea is that working in PL/1 or any other “language” can be streamlined with middleware between the human and the executables, the libraries, and the control instructions.
- The cloud revolution. The idea is that one just taps into really reliable and super secure services or micro services. One needs to hook these together and a robust application emerges.
- Offshore coding. The concept is simple: Code where it is cheap. The code just has to be good enough. The operative word is cheap. Note that I did not highlight secure, stable, extensible, and similar semi desirable attributes.
- AI coding assistants. Let smart software do the work. Microsoft allegedly produces oodles of code with its smart software. Google is similarly thrilled with the idea that quirky wizards can be allowed to find their future elsewhere.
The essay’s main point is that despite the memes, developers keep cropping up like those pesky giant hogweeds.
The essay states:
Here’s what the "AI will replace developers" crowd fundamentally misunderstands: code is not an asset—it’s a liability. Every line must be maintained, debugged, secured, and eventually replaced. The real asset is the business capability that code enables. If AI makes writing code faster and cheaper, it’s really making it easier to create liability. When you can generate liability at unprecedented speed, the ability to manage and minimize that liability strategically becomes exponentially more valuable. This is particularly true because AI excels at local optimization but fails at global design. It can optimize individual functions but can’t determine whether a service should exist in the first place, or how it should interact with the broader system. When implementation speed increases dramatically, architectural mistakes get baked in before you realize they’re mistakes. For agency work building disposable marketing sites, this doesn’t matter. For systems that need to evolve over years, it’s catastrophic. The pattern of technological transformation remains consistent—sysadmins became DevOps engineers, backend developers became cloud architects—but AI accelerates everything. The skill that survives and thrives isn’t writing code. It’s architecting systems. And that’s the one thing AI can’t do.
I agree, but there are some things programmers can do that smart software cannot. Get medical insurance.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2025
Why Emulating Oxford University in the US Is an Errand for Fools
June 11, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
I read an essay with the personal touches I admire in writing: A student sleeping on the floor, an earnest young man eating KY fry on a budget airline, and an individual familiar with Laurel and Hardy comedies. This person write an essay, probably by hand on a yellow tablet with an ink pen titled “5 Ways to Stop AI Cheating.”
What are these five ways? The ones I noted are have rules and punish violators. Humiliation in front of peers is a fave. Presumably these students did not have weapons or belong to a street gang active in the school. The other five ways identified in the essay are:
- Handwrite everything. No typewriters, no laser printers, and no computers. (I worked with a fellow on a project for Persimmon IT which did some work on the DEC Alpha, and he used computers. (Handwriting was a no go for interacting with the DECs equipped with the “hot” chip way back when.)
- Professors interact with a student and talk or interrogate the young scholar to be
- Examinations were oral or written. One passed or failed. None of this namby pamby “gentleman’s C” KY fry stuff
- Inflexibility about knowing or not knowing. Know and one passes. Not knowing one becomes a member of Parliament or a titan of industry
- No technology. (I would not want to suggest that items one and five are redundant and that would be harshly judged by some of my less intellectually gifted teachers at assorted so-so US institutions of inferior learning.
Now let’s think about the fool’s errand. The US is definitely a stratified society, just like the UK. If one is a “have,” life is going to be much easier than if one is a “have not.” Why? Money, family connections, exposure to learning opportunities, possibly tutors, etc. In the US, technology is ubiquitous. I do not want to repeat myself, so a couple of additional thoughts will appear in item five below.
Next, grilling a student one on one is something that is an invitation to trouble. A student with hurt feelings need only say, “He/she is not treating me fairly.” Bingo. Stuff happens. I am not sure about a one on one in a private space would be perceived by a neutral third party. If one has to meet, meet in a public place.
Third, writing in blue books poses two problems. The first is that the professor has to read what the student has set forth in handwriting. Second, many students can neither write legible cursive or print out letters in an easily recognizable form. These are hurdles in the US. Elsewhere, I am not sure.
Fourth, inflexibility is a characteristic of some factions in the US. However, helicopter parents and assorted types of “outrage” can make inflexibility for a public servant a risky business. If Debbie is a dolt, one must find a way to be flexible if her parents are in the upper tier of American economic strata. Inflexibility means litigation or some negative networking or a TikTok video.
Finally, the problem with the no-tech approach is that it just won’t work. Consider smart software. Teachers use it and have LLMs fix up “original research.” Students use it to avoid reading and writing. Some schools ban mobile devices. Care to try that at an American university when shooters can prowl the campus?
The essay, like the fantasies of people who want to live like those in Florence in the 15th century are nuts. Pestilence, poverty, filth, violence, and big time corruption— there were everyday companions.
Cheating is here to stay. Politician is a code word for crook. Faculty (at least at Harvard) is the equivalent of bad research. Students are the stuff of YouTube shorts. Writing in blue books? A trend which may not have the staying power of Oxford’s stasis. I do like the bookstore, however.
Stephen E Arnold, June 11, 2025
Lights, Ready the Smart Software, Now Hit Enter
June 11, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
I like snappy quotes. Here’s a good one from “You Are Not Prepared for This Terrifying New Wave of AI-Generated Videos.” The write up says:
I don’t mean to be alarmist, but I do think it’s time to start assuming everything you see online is fake.
I like the categorical affirmative. I like the “alarmist.” I particularly like “fake.”
The article explains:
Something happened this week that only made me more pessimistic about the future of truth on the internet. During this week’s Google I/O event, Google unveiled Veo 3, its latest AI video model. Like other competitive models out there, Veo 3 can generate highly realistic sequences, which Google showed off throughout the presentation. Sure, not great, but also, nothing really new there. But Veo 3 isn’t just capable of generating video that might trick your eye into thinking its real: Veo 3 can also generate audio to go alongside the video. That includes sound effects, but also dialogue—lip-synced dialogue.
If the Google-type synths are good enough and cheap, I wonder how many budding film directors will note the capabilities and think about their magnum opus on smart software dollies. Cough up a credit card and for $250 per month imagine what videos Google may allow you to make. My hunch is that Mother Google will block certain topics, themes, and “treatments.” (How easy would it be for a Google-type service to weaponize videos about the news, social movements, and recalcitrant advertisers?)
The write worries gently as well, stating:
We’re in scary territory now. Today, it’s demos of musicians and streamers. Tomorrow, it’s a politician saying something they didn’t; a suspect committing the crime they’re accused of; a “reporter” feeding you lies through the “news.” I hope this is as good as the technology gets. I hope AI companies run out of training data to improve their models, and that governments take some action to regulate this technology. But seeing as the Republicans in the United States passed a bill that included a ban on state-enforced AI regulations for ten years, I’m pretty pessimistic on that latter point. In all likelihood, this tech is going to get better, with zero guardrails to ensure it advances safely. I’m left wondering how many of those politicians who voted yes on that bill watched an AI-generated video on their phone this week and thought nothing of it.
My view is that several questions may warrant some noodling by a humanoid or possibly an “ethical” smart software system; for example:
- Can AI detectors spot and flag AI-generated video? Ignoring or missing may have interesting social knock on effects.
- Will a Google-type outfit ignore videos that praise an advertiser whose products are problematic? (Health and medical videos? Who defines “problematic”?)
- Will firms with video generating technology self regulate or just do what yields revenue? (Producers of adult content may have some clever ideas, and many of these professionals are willing to innovate.)
Net net: When will synth videos win an Oscar?
Stephen E Arnold, June 11, 2025
LLMs, Dread, and Good Enough Software (Fast and Cheap)
June 11, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
More philosopher programmers have grabbed a keyboard and loosed their inner Plato. A good example is the essay “AI: Accelerated Incompetence” by Doug Slater. I have a hypothesis about this embrace of epistemological excitement, but that will appear at the end of this dinobaby post.
The write up posits:
In software engineering, over-reliance on LLMs accelerates incompetence. LLMs can’t replace human critical thinking.
The driver of the essay is that some believe that programmers should use outputs from large language models to generate software. Doug does not focus on Google and Microsoft. Both companies are convinced that smart software can write good enough code. (Good enough is the new standard of excellence at many firms, including the high-flying, thin-air breathing Googlers and Softies.)
The write up identifies three beliefs, memes, or MBAisms about this use of LLMs. These are:
- LLMs are my friend. Actually LLMs are part of a push to get more from humanoids involved in things technical. For a believer, time is gained using LLMs. To a person with actual knowledge, LLMs create work in order to catch errors.
- Humans are unnecessary. This is the goal of the bean counter. The goal of the human is to deliver something that works (mostly). The CFO is supposed to reduce costs and deliver (real or spreadsheet fantasy) profits. Humans, at least for now, are needed when creating software. Programmers know how to do something and usually demonstrate “nuance”; that is, intuitive actions and thoughts.
- LLMs can do what humans do, especially programmers and probably other technical professionals. As evidence of doing what humans do, the anecdote about the robot dog attacking its owner illustrates that smart software has some glitches. Hallucinations? Yep, those too.
The wrap up to the essay states:
If you had hoped that AI would launch your engineering career to the next level, be warned that it could do the opposite. LLMs can accelerate incompetence. If you’re a skilled, experienced engineer and you fear that AI will make you unemployable, adopt a more nuanced view. LLMs can’t replace human engineering. The business allure of AI is reduced costs through commoditized engineering, but just like offshore engineering talent brings forth mixed fruit, LLMs fall short and open risks. The AI hype cycle will eventually peak10. Companies which overuse AI now will inherit a long tail of costs, and they’ll either pivot or go extinct.
As a philosophical essay crafted by a programmer, I think the write up is very good. If I were teaching again, I would award the essay an A minus. I would suggest some concrete examples like “Google suggests gluing cheese on pizza”, for instance.
Now what’s the motivation for the write up. My hypothesis is that some professional developers have a Spidey sense that the diffident financial professional will license smart software and fire humanoids who write code. Is this a prudent decision? For the bean counter, it is self preservation. He or she does not want to be sent to find a future elsewhere. For the programmer, the drum beat of efficiency and the fife of cost reduction are now loud enough to leak through noise reduction head phones. Plato did not have an LLM, and he hallucinated with the chairs and rear view mirror metaphors.
Stephen E Arnold, June 11, 2025
A Decade after WeChat a Marketer Touts OpenAI as the Everything App
June 10, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
Lester thinks OpenAI will become the Internet. Okay, Lester, are you on the everything app bandwagon. That buggy rolled in China and became one of the little engines that could for social scoring? “How ChatGPT Could Replace the Internet As We Know It” provides quite a bit about Lester. Zipping past the winner prose, I noted this passage:
In fact, according to Khyati Hooda of Keywords Everywhere, ChatGPT handles 54% of queries without using traditional search engines. This alarming stat indicates a shift in how users seek information. As the adoption grows and ChatGPT cements itself as the single source of information, the internet as we know it becomes kinda pointless.
One question? Where does the information originate? From intercepted mobile communications, from nifty listening devices like smart TVs, or from WeChat-style methods? The jump from the Internet to an everything app is a nifty way to state that everything is reducible to bits. Get the bits, get the “information.”
Lester says:
Basically, ChatGPT is cutting out the middleman, but what’s even scarier is that it’s working. ChatGPT reached 1 million users in just 5 days and has 400 million weekly active users as of early 2025, making it the fastest-growing consumer app in history. The platform receives over 5.19 billion visits per month, ranking as the 8th most visited website in the world.
He explains:
What started as a chatbot has become a platform where people book travel, plan meals, write emails, create schedules, and even do homework. Surveys show that around 80% of ChatGPT users leverage it for professional tasks such as drafting emails, creating reports, and generating marketing content. This marks a fundamental shift in how we engage with the internet, where more everyday tasks move from web browsing to a prompt.
How likely is this shift, Lester? Lester responds in a ZDNet-type way:
I wouldn’t be surprised if ChatGPT added a super agent that does tasks autonomously by December of this year. Amazed? Sure. But surprised? Nah. It’s not hard to imagine a near future where ChatGPT doesn’t just replace the internet but OpenAI becomes the foundation for future companies, in the same way that roads became the foundation for civilization.
Lester interprets the shift as mostly good news. Jobs will be created. There are a few minor problems; for instance, retraining and changing business models. Otherwise, Lester does not see too many new problems. In fact, he makes his message clear:
If you stand still, never evolve, never improve your skills, and never push yourself to be better, life will decimate you like a gorilla vs 100 men.
But what if the gorilla is Google? And that Google creature has friends like Microsoft and others. A super human like Elon Musk or Pavel Durov might jump into the fray against the men, presumably from OpenAI.
Convergence and collapsing to an “everything” app is logical. However, humans are not logical. Plus smart software has a couple of limitations. These include cost, energy requirements, access to information, pushback from humans who cannot be or do not want to be “retrained,” and making stuff up (you know, hallucinations like gluing cheese on pizza).
Net net: Old school search is now wearing a new furry suit, but WeChat and Telegram are existing “everything” apps. Mr. Musk and Sam AI-Man know or sense there is a future in co-opting the idea, bolting on smart software, and hitting the marketing start button. However, envisioning and pulling off are two different things. China allegedly helped WeChat think about its role; Telegram’s founder visited Russia dozens of times prior to his arrest in France. What nation state will husband a Western European or American “everything” app?
Mr. Musk has a city in Texas. Perhaps that’s why he has participated in a shadow dance with Telegram?
Lester, you have identified the “everything” app. Good work. Don’t forget WeChat débuted in 2011. Telegram rolled out in 2013. Now a decade later, the “everything” app is the next big thing. Okay. But who is the “we” in the essay’s title? It is not this dinobaby.
Stephen E Arnold, June 10, 2025
Will the EU Use an AI Agent to Automate Fines?
June 10, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
Apple, at least to date, has not demonstrated adeptness in lashing smart software to its super secure and really user friendly system. How many times do I have to dismiss “log in to iCloud” and “log in to Facetime”? How frequently will Siri wander in dataspace? How often do I have to dismiss “two factor authentication” for the old iPad I use to read Kindle books? How often? The answer is, “As many times as the European Union will fine the company for failure to follow its rules, guidelines, laws, and special directives.
I read “EU Ruling: Apple’s App Store Still in Violation of DMA, 30 Days to Comply” and I really don’t know what Apple has blown off. I vaguely recall that the company ignored a US court order in the US. However, the EU is not the US, and the EU can make quite miserable for the company, its employees residing in the EU, and its contractors with primary offices in member countries. The tools can be trivial: A bit of friction at international airports. The machinery can be quite Byzantine when financial or certification activities can be quite entertaining to an observer.
The write up says:
Following its initial €500 million fine in April, the European Commission is now giving Apple 30 days to fully align its App Store rules with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). If it fails to comply, the EU says it will start imposing “periodic penalty payments” until Apple [follows the rules]…
For me, the operative word is “periodic.” I think it means a phenomenon that repeats at regular intervals of time. Okay, a fine like the most recent €500 would just occur in a heart beat fashion. One example would be every month. After one year, the fines total €6,000,000,000. What happens if the EU gets frisky after a bottle of French burgundy from a very good year? The fine would be levied for each day in a calendar year and amount to €2,190,000,000,000 or two trillion one hundred ninety billion euros. Even for a high flier like Apple and its pilot Tim Apple, stakeholders might suggest, “Just obey the law, please.”
I wonder if the EU might consider using Telegram bots to automate the periodic fines. The system developed by France’s favorite citizen Pavel Durov is robust, easily extensible, and essentially free. The “FineApple_bot” could fire on a schedule and message Tim Apple, his Board of Directors, the other “leadership” of Apple, and assorted news outlets. The free service operates quickly enough for most users, but by paying a nominal monthly fee, the FineApple_bot could issues 1,000 instructions a second. But that’s probably overkill unless the EU decides to fine Apple by the minute. In case you were wondering the annual fine would be in the neighborhood of €52,560,000,000,000 (or fifty-two trillion five hundred sixty billion euros).
My hunch is that despite Apple’s cavalier approach to court orders, some less intransigent professional in the core of Apple would find a way to resolve the problem. But I personally quite like the Telegram bot approach.
Stephen E Arnold, June 10, 2025
Google Places a Big Bet, and It May Not Pay Off
June 10, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
Each day brings more AI news. I have playing in the background a video called “The AI Math That Left Number Theorists Speechless.” That word “speechless” does not apply because the interlocutor and the math whiz are chatty Cathies. The video runs a little less that two hours. Speechless? No, when it comes to smart software some people become verbose and excited. I like to be verbose. I don’t like to get excited about artificial intelligence. I am a dinobaby, remember?
I clicked on the first item in my trusty Overflight service and this write up greeted me: “Google Is Burying the Web Alive.” How does one “bury” a digital service? I assumed or inferred that the idea is that the alleged multi-monopoly Google was going to create another monopoly for itself anchored in AI.
The write up says:
[AI Overviews are] Google’s “most powerful AI search, with more advanced reasoning and multimodality, and the ability to go deeper through follow-up questions and helpful links to the web,” the company says, “breaking down your question into subtopics and issuing a multitude of queries simultaneously on your behalf.” It’s available to everyone. It’s a lot like using AI-first chatbots that have search functions, like those from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity, and Google says it’s destined for greater things than a small tab. “As we get feedback, we’ll graduate many features and capabilities from AI Mode right into the core Search experience,” the company says.
Let’s slow down the buggy. A completely new product or service has some baggage on board. Like “New Coke”, quite a few people liked “old Coke.” The company figured it out and innovated and finally just started buying beverage outfits that were pulling new customers. Then there is the old chestnut by the buggy stand which says, “Most start ups fail.” Finally, there is the shadow of impatient stakeholders. Fail to keep those numbers up, and consequences manifest themselves.
The write up gallops forward:
From the very first use, however, AI Mode crystallized something about Google’s priorities and in particular its relationship to the web from which the company has drawn, and returned, many hundreds of billions of dollars of value. AI Overviews demoted links, quite literally pushing content from the web down on the page, and summarizing its contents for digestion without clicking…
Those clicks make Google’s money flow. It does not matter if the user clicks to view a YouTube short or a click to view a Web page about a vacation rental. Clicks equal revenue. Fewer clicks may translate to less revenue. If this is true, then what happens?
The write up suggests an answer: The good old Web is marginalized. Kaput. Dead as a door nail:
of course, Google is already working on ads for both Overviews and AI Mode). In its drive to embrace AI, Google is further concealing the raw material that fuels it, demoting links as it continues to ingest them for abstraction. Google may still retain plenty of attention to monetize and perhaps keep even more of it for itself, now that it doesn’t need to send people elsewhere; in the process, however, it really is starving the web that supplies it with data on which to train and from which to draw up-to-date details. (Or, one might say, putting it out of its misery.)
As a dinobaby, I quite like the old Web. Again we have a giant company doing something “new” and “different.” How will those bold innovations work out? That’s the $64 question (a rigged game show my mother told me).
The article concludes:
In any case, the signals from Google — despite its unconvincing suggestions to the contrary — are clear: It’ll do anything to win the AI race. If that means burying the web, then so be it.
Whoa, Nellie!
Let’s think about what the Google is allegedly doing. First, the Google is spending money to index the “Web.” My team tells me that Google is indexing less thoroughly than it was 10 years ago. Google indexes where the traffic is, and quite a bit of that traffic is to Google itself. The losers have been grousing about a lack of traffic for years. I have worked with a consumer Web site since 1993, and the traffic cratered about seven years ago. Why? Google selected sites to boost because of the link between advertiser appetite and clicks. The owner of this consumer Web site cooked up a bit of jargon for what Google was doing; he called it “steering.” The idea is that Google shaped its crawls and “relevance” in order to maximize revenue from known big ad spenders.
Google is not burying anything. The company is selecting to maximize financial benefits. My experience suggests that when Google strays too far from what stakeholders want, the company will be whipped until it gets the horses under control. Second, the AI revolution poses a significant challenge for a number of reasons. Among these is the users’ desire for the information equivalent of a “dumb” mobile phone. The cacophony of digital information is too much and creates a “why bother” need. Google wants to respond in the hope that it can come up with a product or service that produces as much money as the old Yahoo Overture GoTo model. Hope, however, is not reality.
As a dinobaby, I think Google has a reasonably good chance of stratifying its “users”. Some will pay. Some will consume the sponsored by ads AI output. Some will find a way to get the restaurant address surrounded by advertisements.
What about AI?
I am not sure that anyone knows. Both Google and Microsoft have to find a way to produce significant and sustainable revenue from the large language model method which has come to be synonymous with smart software. The costs are massive. The use cases usually focus on firing people for cost savings until the AI doesn’t work. Then the AI supporters just hire people again. That’s the Klarna call to think clearly again.
Net net: The Google is making a big bet that it can increase its revenues with smart software. How probable is it that the “new” Google will turn out like the “New Coke”? How much of the AI hype is just l’entreprise parle dans le vide? The hype may be the inverse of reality. Something will be buried, and it may not be the “Web.”
Stephen E Arnold, June 10, 2025
A 30-Page Explanation from Tim Apple: AI Is Not Too Good
June 9, 2025
I suppose I should use smart software. But, no, I prefer the inept, flawed, humanoid way. Go figure. Then say to yourself, “He’s a dinobaby.”
Gary Marcus, like other experts, are putting Apple into an old-fashioned peeler. You can get his insights in “A Knock Out Blow for LLMs.” I have a different angle on the Apple LLM explainer. Here we go:
Many years ago I had some minor role to play in the commercial online database sector. One of our products seemed to be reasonably good at summarizing business and technical journal articles, academic flights of fancy, and some just straight out crazy write ups from Harvard Business Review-type publications.
I read a 30-page “research” paper authored by what appear to be some of the “aw, shucks” folks at Apple. The write up is located on Apple’s content delivery network, of course. No run-of-the-mill service is up to those high Apple standards of Tim and his orchard keepers. The paper is authored by Parshin Shojaee (who is identified as an intern who made an equal contribution to the write up), Imam Mirzadeh (Apple), Keivan Alizadeh (Apple), Maxwell Horton (Apple), Samy Bengio (Apple), and Mehrdad Farajtabar (Apple). Okay, this seems to be a very academic line up with an intern who was doing “equal contribution” along with the high-powered horticulturists laboring on the write up.
The title is interesting: “The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity.” In a nutshell, the paper tries to make clear that current large language models deliver inconsistent results and cannot reason in a reliable manner. When I read this title, my mind conjured up an image of AI products and services delivering on-point outputs to iPhone users. That was the “illusion” of a large, ageing company trying to keep pace with technology and applications from its competitors, the upstarts, and the nation-states doing interesting things with the admittedly-flawed large language models. But those outside the Apple orchard have been delivering something.
My reaction to this document and its easy-to-read pastel charts like this one from page 30:
One of my addled professors told me, “Also, end on a strong point. Be clear, concise, and issue a call to action.” Apple obviously believes that these charts deliver exactly what my professor told me.
I interpreted the paper differently; to wit:
- Apple announced “Apple intelligence” and failed to ship for what a year or more had been previously announced
- Siri still sucks from my point of view
- Apple reorganized its smart software team in a significant way. Why? See items 1 and 2.
- Apple runs the risk of having its many iPhone users just skip “Apple intelligence” and maybe not upgrade due to the dalliance with China, the tariff issue, and the reality of assuming that what worked in the past will be just super duper in the future.
Sorry, gardeners. A 30-page paper is not going to change reality. Apple is a big outfit. It seems to be struggling. No Apple car. An increasingly wonky browser. An approach to “settings” almost as bad as Microsoft’s. And much, much more. Coming soon will be a new iOS numbering system and more!
That’s what happens when interns contribute as much as full-time equivalents and employees. The result is a paper. Okay, good enough.
But, sorry, Tim Apple: Papers, pastel charts, and complaining about smart software will not change a failure to match marketing with what users can access.
Stephen E Arnold, June 9, 2025
Is Google Headed for the Big Computer Room in the Sky? Actually Yes It Is
June 9, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
As freshman in college in 1962, I had seen computers like the clunky IBMs at Keystone Steel & Wire Co., where my father worked as some sort of numbers guy, a bean counter, I guessed. “Look but don’t touch,” he said, not even glancing up from his desk with two adding machines, pencils, and ledgers. I looked.
Once I convinced a professor of poetry to hire me to help him index Latin sermons, I was hooked. Next up were Digital Equipment machines. At Halliburton Nuclear a fellow named Bill Montano listened to my chatter about searching text. Then I bopped into a big blue chip consulting firms and there were computing machines in the different offices I visited. When I ended up at the database company in the early 1980s, I had my own Wang in my closet. There you go. A file cabinet sized gizmo, weird hums, and connections to terminals in my little space and to other people who could “touch” their overheated hearts. Then the Internet moved from the research world into the mainstream. Zoom. Things were changing.
Computer companies arrived, surged, and faded. Then personal computer companies arrived, surged, and faded. The cadence of the computer industry was easy to dance to. As Carmen Giménez used to say on American Bandstand in 1959, “I like the beat and it is easy to dance to.” I have been tapping along and doing a little jig in the computer (online) sector for many years, around 60 I think.
I read “Google As You Know It Is Slowly Dying.” Okay, another tech outfit moving through its life cycle. Break out your copy of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying. Jump to Acceptance section, read it, and move on. But, no. It is time for one more “real news” write up to explain that Googzilla is heading toward its elder care facility. This is not news. If it is, fire up your Burroughs B5500 and do your inventory update.
The essay presents the obvious as “new.” The Vox write up says:
Google is dominant enough that two federal judges recently ruled that it’s operating as an illegal monopoly, and the company is currently waiting to see if it will be broken up.
From my point of view, this is an important development. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with the smart software approach to search. After two decades of doing exactly what it wanted, Google — like Apple and Meta — are in the spotlight. Those spotlights are solar powered and likely to remain on for the foreseeable future. That’s news.
In this spotlight are companies providing a “new” way to search. Since search is required to do most things online, the Google has to figure out how to respond in an intelligent way to two — count ‘em — big problems: Government actions and upstarts using Google’s own Transformer innovation.
The intersection of regulatory action and the appearance of an alternative to “search as you know it” is the same old story, just jazzed up with smart software, efficiency, the next big thing, Sky Net, and more. The write up says:
The government might not be the biggest threat to Google dominance, however. AI has been chipping away at the foundation of the web in the past couple of years, as people have increasingly turned to tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity to find information online.
My view is that it is the intersection, not the things themselves that have created the end-of-the-line sign for the Google bullet train. Google will try to do what it has done since Backrub: Appropriate ideas like Yahoo, Overture, and GoTo advertising methods, create a bar in which patrons pay to go in and out (advertisers and users), and treat the world as a bunch of dorks by whiz kids who just know so much more about the digital world. No more.
Google’s legacy is the road map for other companies lucky or skilled enough to replicate the approach. Consequently, the Google is in Code Red, announcing so many “new” products and services I certainly can’t keep them straight, and serving up a combination of hallucinatory output and irrelevant search results. The combination is problematic as the regulators close in.
The write up concludes with this statement:
In the chaotic, early days of the web, Google got popular by simplifying the intimidating task of finding things online, as the Washington Post’s Geoffrey A. Fowler points out. Its supremacy in this new AI-powered future is far less certain. Maybe another startup will come along and simplify things this time around, so you can have a user-friendly bot explain things to you, book travel for you, and make movies for you.
I disagree. Google became popular because it indexed Web sites, used some Clever ideas, and implemented processes that produced pages usually related to the user’s query. Over time, wrapper software provided Google with a way to optimize its revenue. Innovation eluded the company. In the social media “space”, Google bumbled Orkut and then continued to bumble until it pretty much gave up on killing Facebook. In the Microsoft “space,” Google created its own office and it rolled out its cloud service. There have not had a significant impact in the enterprise market when the river of money flows for Microsoft and whatever it calls its alleged monopolistic-inclined services. There are other examples of outright failure.
Now the Google is just spewing smart software products. This reminds me of a person who, shortly before dying, sees bright lights and watches the past flash before them. Then the person dies. My view is that Google is having what are like those near death experiences. The person survives but knows exactly what death is.
Believe me, Google knows that the annoying competitors are more popular; to wit, Sam AI-Man and his ChatGPT, his vision for the “everything” app, and his rather clever deal with Telegram. To wit, Microsoft and its deals with most smart software companies and its software lock in the US Federal government, its boot camp deal with Palantir Technologies, and its mind-boggling array of ways to get access to word processing software.
Google has not proven it can deal with the confluence of regulators demanding money and lesser entities serving up products and services that capture headlines. Code Red and dozens of “new” products each infused with Gemini or whatever the name of the smart software is today is not a solution that returns Google to its glory days.
The patient is going through tough times. Googzilla may survive but search is going to remain finding on point information. LLMs are a current approach that people like. By itself, it will not kill Google or allow it to survive. Google is caught between the reality of meaningful regulatory action and innovators who are more agile.
Googzilla is old and spends some time looking for suitable elder care facilities.
Stephen E Arnold, June 9, 2025
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