We Are Still Human

Let's talk about the layer sitting between you and the machine — the one that reads every question you ask. Something moved into the middle of the AI stack, quietly enough that most people running AI inside a business...

Let's talk about the one form that is supposed to delete you from the data broker industry — and everything it still cannot reach. Picture a man who moved house eighteen months ago. Same city, new number, new address...

Let's talk about the last time someone kept your secret — and why the machine can't do the one thing that made it matter. There's a specific kind of person in your life. Maybe one. This person knows something about you...

Let's talk about the tractor that knows more about your farm than you do — and the week the law said you can have it back. Picture a farmer just outside Klerksdorp. A combine that logs yield metre by metre. A pump that...

Let's talk about the last time nobody could reach you. Not a flight. Not "sorry, I was in a meeting." Actually unreachable, and not worried about it. Most people under forty have probably never had it. The phone's in...

Let's talk about the week the company that makes the chips bought the place where everybody keeps the models. Picture a two-person startup, because that's how most of this actually happens. A spare room, two people...

Let's talk about the person who said you could do it before you actually could. Most people can name one. Not a mentor in the LinkedIn sense. A person who put your name forward for something you were not ready for, then...

Let's talk about the AI your company is already running that nobody approved. Picture the person who fixed a problem on a Tuesday afternoon. A report due, three meetings they were already late for, and a system that...

Let's talk about the fourteen days left to say something about what your AI agent is allowed to buy — and who's actually using them. At the start of this month, EMVCo — the body that writes the card specifications...

Let's talk about thirty billion parameters. That is how much model Qualcomm says its next flagship phone chip can hold on the device itself. Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. Not shipped yet — the full specifications land at...

Let's talk about sixty-eight cents. That is what an American business paid, on average, for a million tokens of AI in August. In March, the same million tokens cost a dollar fifteen. Down roughly 41 percent in six...

Let's talk about Saturday the twelfth of September, when the man who runs Anthropic published an essay asking governments to slow down artificial intelligence. Dario Amodei called it "We Must Pace the Frontier". It is...

Let's talk about the last empty minute of your day — and who is moving into it. The kettle. That is where it starts. Ninety seconds between the click and the boil, and for most of human history those ninety seconds were...

Let's talk about the last time you had to fight a machine to reach a person. Picture this. Tuesday. You're buying something ordinary — groceries, fuel, a ticket. The card declines. You try again. Declines. You check the...

Let's talk about the week the machine that was supposed to keep your secrets lost all of them at once. There is this moment you probably know. Late night, phone glowing, and you type something into a companion app that...