Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?

If there is any place where AI is rendering humans obsolete—in which the dawn of superintelligence is already upon us—it is coding. This makes the results of a recent study genuinely astonishing.

Advice for Software Development Students

I’m on a university campus at the start of an academic year, sharing my experience about people with basic AI skills who get much more done during the day than people like me who graduated with the ability to write code with punch cards. And during coffee chats with university lecturers, I …

Thumbs Up to the Editor's Note by Charlie Taylor

Charlie Taylor, editor of Connected Magazine in Ireland, uses his editorial column to show "while Europe has been something of a laggard in terms of tech spending in recent years, the latest forecast shows it is all-change in 2025. “Tech spend on the continent is set to grow by 5 per cent, …

Those Educated Irish Women

Irish women are among the most-educated in the world–especially compared to American women. According to the OECD, “Secondary attainment improved across most OECD countries. Educational and labour-market outcomes have improved for the young adults most at risk of falling behind. Girls …

Cargo Bikes and Trishaws on Dublin's Quays

I’m amazed to see the uptake of pedal power in Dublin as cycle lanes become well-established. According to IrishCycle.com, “There has been a 53% decrease in the number of cars on average on Dublin’s Bachelor’s Walk since 2017 when bus and tram or priority measures were put in place. …

Printing emails and buying vinyl

Twenty years ago, I spotted gray hairs printing emails on a daily basis. I remember that observation whenever I see department heads and meeting organisers print their agendas for review. And I’m more comfortable referring to outlines in my Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks during Zoom calls or while …

Time to aggressively address misinformation

I’m sharing a thoughtful piece of writing from Adrian Weckler, Ireland’s top technology journalist. He points out we need to do something about the fact that more than 20% of people in Ireland believe most things they read online. According to last week’s Red C poll for the Electoral …

Creative students in the era of AI

Happy to see that even with creative tools available through AI, my UX students will always be able to get nixers involving the production of logos and creative imagery. It’s something that I’ve learned while teaching SMEs in the County Tipperary Chamber Skillnet

Flywheels, Calendars and SharePoint

My 11yo Skoda needs a dual mass flywheel. I’ve thinking about that as I look at my calendar. And I’ve discovered a way to cobble up an RSS feed from a SharePoint news site. The image above was generated by AI.

Channeling ChatGPT

Philip Agre takes the institutional vantage point of a company and posits that the human-replacement agent that is an Artificial General Intelligence is not a human as we understand ourselves–just like the car salesperson wasn’t a full human within the world of a car dealership. Agre …

CRM is more important for friend discovery now

I’ve had to increase the width of the slice of the Venn Diagram to rediscover where real friends are encamped on social.

First Lab Session for AI Workgroup

I’m reviewing working notes at publish.obsidian.md/transform… left behind by a group of trainees from the Tipperary County Council who spent more than five hours on keyboards while completing hands-on tasks with AI. We used several GPTs from OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity.ai, and …

Wouldn't find that on my GSM Phone

When my teenagers ask me what’s different between their iPhones and the 1995 vintage mobile phone in my gadget drawer, I tell them to read about the heat death of the internet www.takahe.org.nz/heat-deat… because that’s a good take on the distinction between our connected lives …

Ribbon of Tools

I put a ribbon of tools that I use every day on my Microsoft Surface Book into this post. I teach digital transformation to a different group of mid-career professionals every six weeks. I've never had a group of these tech-minded trainees in which more than 90% of those attending were using a paid …

Creators Started Listening to my Google Searches and Reddit Dives.

While teaching students how AIs learn to be smarter, I stumbled upon some discoveries concerning algorithms that are watching me. I discovered Only Fans Creators started showing up in my Instagram Reels after I searched Google for reasons there’s been a drop in subscriptions and followers …

Diffusion Models Deepfaking Taylor Swift

Reality Defender says they have 90% confidence that the images of sexually explicit poses of Taylor Swift were created using a diffusion model. This AI-driven technology is accessible through more than 100,000 apps and publicly available models, CEO Ben Colman told Ken Conger of the New York Times. …

Use AI to get a job

Enhance your remote employment options by using these AI tools: Resume to jobs: hnresumetojobs.com Take interview notes metaview.ai Mock interview with AI: interviewai.me Apply automatically: applyish.com Interview questions: interviewgpt.ai Fix your resume: fixmyresume.xyz Job search: …

Revealed--GenZ isn't connecting

According to UK marketing research firm GWI, social media usage is on the decline. I teach very clever university students. Many of them believe there is no compelling need to share ideas in one place anymore. They’re not pushed to connect to share. I believe we’re seeing an exodus of …

Big Fan of Mem.ai and soon it's reading email threads

In the mid-90s, I was so happy with a flat-text indexing service called AskSam. I’d install the software from a set of floppies and it would keep track of all sorts of notes I had scattered across my laptop. Today, I still have a scattergun approach to information and I’m using a much …

CompSci Majors Are No Longer Safe

As Kelli Maria Korducki explains in The Atlantic, computer science is no longer the safe major. From the time I left high school, computer science degrees have been sold as one of the safest paths to job security. Through several downturns, coding jobs kept spawning and wages are very good. By the …

Plenty of mid-level tech jobs out there

Paul Kedrosky points out that all eight of the Google-based authors of the seminal “transformers” paper that helped spark the current wave of large language models have now left Google to start various AI companies. That is more people than there were senior vice presidents at Google in 2004. …

Waving to Anchor OG peeps

Waving to Anchor OG peeps who are using the one minute audio option inside IG group messaging. The Instagram kludge isn’t as elegant as the original version of Anchor v1. I doubt few will know of the casual social audio of Anchor now that the app is all-Spotify. Shout-out

The Rapid Rise of Radio in the 1920s

From Bernie Goldbach's photostream: Wondering if AI is rising as fast in the 2020s Reshaping Education with AI Listening AssistanceStart at the experience and work back toward the techSeven New Rules of Digital Transformation by Red Hat 

Welcome to Hotel Elsevier

Elsevier appears to be collecting and monetizing our personal data, sometimes without writers' consent. Data can be used to “extrapolate core working hours, vacation times, and other patterns of a person’s life.” Over 20,000 researchers now refuse to publish, review, or edit for …

Continued growth in Fediverse

From @donncha@mastodon.ie I saw mind-boggling Fediverse stats Mastodon has the most users of any Fediverse sw. There are more Fediverse servers in EU than in the US.