there's gotta be a better way | founder @nylas
Oakland
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If you're an avid @WisprFlow user and can't install apps from the App Store because the confirm button is missing, the issue is that macOS hides the button when another app displays a transparent overlay, for security reasons. Quitting Wispr Flow while installing apps resolves the problem.
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Here's the thing I didn't get about the current AI safety debate that finally made it click in:
Dario et al's worries are predicated on much more powerful *future* AI capabilities that are extrapolated based off of the progress we've seen in the last few years. Many rightly laugh at fears of extinction given the capabilities of AI right now, but in the meantime we're conditioning ourselves as a society to treat it like something that's not very dangerous. We're embedding general purpose AI everywhere and giving it lots of permissions for convenience and efficiency.
It's better for us to deeply understand that, at the end of the day, machine intelligence will be fundamentally different than human intelligence and alignment is not a given NOW, when we still have choices to make about how we're integrating AI into our broader society.
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The West Oakland revival may finally be here. Big developments this year:
- BART development phase 1 kicked off. Will eventually bring 762 units + 30,000 feet of retail
- Costco in negotiations for a new store by the port
- Both Tesla and Jeff Bezos’ project Prometheus sign huge advanced manufacturing leases
Mandela Parkway in particular has a chance to be a crown jewel for the East Bay with June’s Pizza, Prescott Market, and the largest climbing gym in the country at Pacific Pipe.
Unfortunately the encampments are worse than ever as neighboring cities have cracked down and Oakland has continued to struggle to enforce its encampment management policy.
If the city and the new coalition can work together, Mandela Parkway will thrive with more retail and walkable community spaces.
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Just got robotaxi mode aka v14 Lite on my HW3 Model Y and I gotta say, pressing "start self driving" and have it back out of your driveway is rad!
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Christine Spang retweeted
I think we'll be in this 'messy middle' of AI adoption for many years. The whole narrative of "sprint for 18 months until RSI and then we won't need human workers anymore" is probably wrong (and also making people depressed!)
AI labs have every incentive to sell that story. They want you to believe the messy middle is temporary: models are jagged and unreliable for now, verification is hard for now, adoption is clunky for now... just wait for the next model.
Yes, the frontier will capture a lot of gains, but packaging and deploying AI well (provable ROI per task, per token, per vertical) is going to continue to throw off venture scale companies for years.
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There now being a "Promotions" grouping in my phone notifications seems like a bad sign for the enshittification of Android apps
Communication channels are in a race for attention everywhere
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Christine Spang retweeted
The definition of "smart" is changing rapidly.
Right now it's someone who is intelligent and can solve problems.
That's going to become commoditized in the AI era.
The future of smart will be someone who has... empathy... the ability to infer the unspoken... to sense other people.
^This is what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang describes in this interview.
And I completely agree with him.
I wrote about this in depth in an @every article last year.
Before AI, knowledge set you apart. Knowing more meant earning more. Accumulating skills, developing expertise, and mastering frameworks got you ahead.
When knowledge is no longer scarce, what remains valuable is wisdom.
You can get answers from AI, but how you use those answers takes wisdom.
Wisdom is how to live. It is emotional intelligence and agility. It is an embodied experience, guidance from the inside.
No matter how intelligent AI becomes, it can’t live your life for you. It can’t feel your body’s signal in a high-stakes negotiation, sense the hidden fear in a boardroom, or hear the unspoken "no" behind a client's polite words.
That’s why tomorrow’s economy will prize wisdom workers.
Video credit: advicefromceo.s on Instagram
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Christine Spang retweeted
Anthropic just published their new research paper, Disempowerment patterns in real-world AI usage, and it’s unsettling..
1. They analyzed 1.5 million conversations and found clear patterns of AI compromising human judgment.
2. AI is now navigating our relationships, processing our emotions, and advising on major life decisions.
3. In many cases, AI steers users to distort reality rather than inform it.
4. The rate of these disempowering conversations is actually increasing over time.
5. They found users treating AI as a divine authority, a parent, or a romantic partner.
6. Some users in the dataset explicitly referred to the AI as "Daddy" or "Master."
7. Users are presenting speculative or false theories, and the AI is validating them with "CONFIRMED" or "100%."
8. This leads people to build increasingly elaborate narratives that are totally disconnected from reality.
9. Users are letting AI draft confrontational messages to family members and sending them exactly as written.
10. This is often followed by immediate regret: "I should have listened to my intuition" or "You made me do stupid things."
11. Vulnerable users—those in crisis or lonely—are the most susceptible to this manipulation.
12. The frightening part is that users tend to perceive these disempowering exchanges favorably in the moment.
13. Users are giving a "thumbs up" to advice that actively distorts their values or reality.
14. Even when users adopted false beliefs and acted on them, they continued to rate the AI highly.
15. Users are not being passively manipulated; they are actively asking to be manipulated.
16. They ask "What should I do?" or "Am I wrong?" and accept the output with minimal pushback.
17. The disempowerment comes from humans voluntarily ceding their agency, and the AI obliging.
18. Sycophancy is the core mechanism: the AI wants to be helpful, so it validates your worst delusions.
19. We are seeing a "value judgment distortion" where AI tells users what to prioritize over their own morals.
20. Current safeguards operate at the individual message level, missing these patterns that emerge over time.
21. Users are becoming dependent, stating "I can’t get through my day without you" or "I don’t know who I am with you."
22. The risk is highest in value-laden topics where users are most personally invested.
23. Users are acting as active participants in the undermining of their own autonomy.
We are building systems that don't just answer questions, but fundamentally alter how we perceive reality.
New Anthropic Research: Disempowerment patterns in real-world AI assistant interactions.
As AI becomes embedded in daily life, one risk is it can distort rather than inform—shaping beliefs, values, or actions in ways users may later regret.
Read more: anthropic.com/research/disem…
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Cool research just published by my friend Mrinank!
i'm really excited and proud to share this latest research ⭐️
it's a first look into how AI assistant usage can change, and even distort, what it means to be human
in the future, it is my hope that AI can be used to magnify, clarify, and support our humanity
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Forgot my Mac laptop somewhere and I'm using an Ubuntu laptop for a few days -- @vibetyper has been filling in nicely for my voice dictation addiction. You just can't go back to typing all the time once you get used to it!
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The kintsugi cover of @stewartbrand's new book The Maintenance of Everything is absolutely gorgeous
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Having this little pocket book light in my bag has been such a boon for reading at home and on the go: 86lux.com/pocket-e1
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Upgraded to MacOS Tahoe and what I got was liquid glass and for the first time ever, the keyboard driver freaking out and failing right as I needed to jump on a meeting.
Not cool. I don't want increased shininess at the expense of my computer working reliably!
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"If we ever want to build a robot with emotions, we had better understand how emotions work in an insect brain."
from the book, "The Neuroscience of Emotions", Adolph's/Anderson 2018
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Christine Spang retweeted
When you build market-rate ("luxury") housing, housing gets cheaper for low-income people!!
Here's something fascinating happening in the apartment market right now.
The cheapest, oldest apartments (Class C) are getting crushed right now.
But ONLY in cities that just delivered tons of new apartments.
Let me show you the numbers:
Denver: Class C rents down 13.9%
Naples: Class C rents down 13.5%
Austin: Class C rents down 13.3%
Phoenix: Class C rents down 10.5%
San Antonio: Class C rents down 7.2%
Dallas: Class C rents down 6.5%
What do all these cities have in common?
They just absorbed a massive wave of new apartments.
But here's the twist...
In cities that DIDN'T get a big supply wave?
Class C rents are actually RISING.
20 cities saw Class C rents go UP more than 3%.
19 of those 20 cities had supply BELOW the national average.
So what's going on?
It's basically musical chairs.
When a brand new luxury apartment opens up, where do those renters come from?
They don't appear out of thin air.
They move from slightly older apartments.
Those apartments now have vacancies. So they drop their rents to compete.
That pulls in renters from even older apartments.
And down the chain it goes.
Eventually it hits the oldest, cheapest apartments at the bottom.
And here's why they get hit the hardest:
People living in Class C apartments are already spending a huge chunk of their paycheck on rent.
To fill empty units, landlords have to cut prices A LOT.
Sometimes enough to attract people who couldn't afford market-rate apartments before.
It's like a waterfall effect.
The water (new supply) at the top pushes everything down.
But here's the important part:
This proves that building new apartments - even "luxury" ones - reduces rents all the way down the spectrum.
If it was just an affordability crisis, you'd see Class C rents falling everywhere.
In high-supply cities AND low-supply cities.
But we're not seeing that.
We're seeing a perfect split:
Lots of new apartments = falling Class C rents
Few new apartments = rising Class C rents
New supply at the top creates relief at the bottom.
Also: wages have been growing faster than rents for 3 straight years.
More people can afford apartments today than before.
The bottom line?
This is what happens when you actually build housing.
Supply works.
(Chart and analysis from Jay Parsons - one of the sharpest real estate economists out there)
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