What does she see in him?

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It happened years ago, but I've never forgotten it. I was singing and speaking at a small Midwestern college. During an informal seminar in one of the dorm lounges, a couple came in late.

I couldn't help noticing something odd about them. The girl was very attractive, close to cover-girl standards. The guy looked as if he had just walked off the set for The Nerds. He was short, wore thick horn-rimmed glasses and a plaid short-sleeved shirt. He was definitely a candidate for getting sand kicked in his face.

But the strangest thing of all was that these two were obviously in love. What could she possibly see in him? I asked myself. Suddenly I realized — she was blind.

But what did she see in him? Everything. Everything that's important about who a person is, what love is, and what a real man is. She saw everything she needed to know about him.

Blessed are the blind, for they can see people as they really are. Woe to those who can see, for they will constantly be tripped up by the image.

John Fischer

Expert Performance

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Expert performance is built through thousands of hours of practice in your area of expertise, in varying conditions, through which you accumulate a vast library of such mental models that enables you to correctly discern a given situation and instantaneously select and execute the correct response.

At the root of our effectiveness is our ability to grasp the world around us and to take the measure of our own performance. We are constantly making judgments about what we know and don't know whether we're capable of handling a task or solving a problem. As we work at something, we keep an eye on ourselves, adjusting our thinking or actions as we progress.

Monitoring your own thinking is what psychologists call metacognition (meta is Greek for "about".) Learning to be accurate self-observers helps us stay out of blind alleys, make good decisions, and reflect on how we might do better next time. An important part of this skill is being sensitive to the ways we can delude ourselves. One problem with poor judgment is that we usually don't know when we've got it. Another problem is the sheer scope of the ways our judgment can be led astray.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

13 articles about how Companies are using AI

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The origins of our anger

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Problems of anger begin as seed thoughts of self-pity, discouragement, jealousy, or some other negative thought. One’s thought life is the key ingredient in behavioral and emotional control; therefore thoughts prior to and during times of anger are important. Thoughts give emotional feelings prolonged existence and strength, and lead interpretation to vague emotions.

When anger feelings begin, people should “listen” to themselves think. Their minds are constantly making value judgments, decisions, and comparisons. Therefore, there always exists the opportunity to intercept anger by changing these thoughts.

Gary Collins, Counseling and Anger

19 Articles about the Dangers of AI

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Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries – 404 Media  

AI Hallucinations: What Designers Need to Know - NN Group

AI systems with ‘unacceptable risk’ are now banned in the EU – Tech Crunch

Ultra-efficient AI won’t solve data centers’ climate problem. This might. – Washington Post

Citing ‘Shadow of Evil,’ Vatican Warns About the Risks of A.I. – New York Times  

South Carolina to Reboot Giant Nuclear Project to Meet AI Demand – Wall Street Journal  

Arrested by AI: Police ignore standards after facial recognition matches – Washington Post

AI agents’ promise to arrange your finances, do your taxes, book your holidays – and put us all at risk – The Conversation  

The soldier who exploded a Cybertruck at Trump hotel in Vegas used AI to help plan the attack – Associated Press  

A Book App Used AI to ‘Roast’ Its Users. It Went Anti-Woke Instead – Wired

The cognitive cost of AI – Fast Company  

Ex-Google CEO warns there's a time to consider "unplugging" AI systems – Axios  

Their Job Is to Push Computers Toward AI Doom - Wall Street Journal 

An AI companion suggested he kill his parents. Now his mom is suing. - Washington Post   

New Book Explores Promise and Perils of AI for Scientific Community – Anne Berg Public Policy Center  

Labelers training AI say they're overworked, underpaid and exploited by big American tech companies - CBS News

AI-generated influencers based on stolen images of real-life adult content creators are flooding social media – Wired  

The phony comforts of AI skepticism - Platformer 

Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: "Human … Please die." - CBS News

Unleashing AI Agents

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Setting a bunch of A.I. agents loose on the internet could provoke a backlash. If you’re a business buying ads on Amazon, you want those ads to be seen by humans, not bots pretending to be humans.In the future, I can imagine more websites taking steps to block A.I. agents or steer them toward certain pages or products.

Right now, A.I. agents are too incompetent to be much of a threat. But it doesn’t take much imagination to envision a near future when most of the web will consist of robots talking to robots, buying things from robots and writing emails that only other robots will read.

Kevin Roose  writing in the New York Times

19 Articles about the Business of Running an AI Company

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Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance - Washington Post 

Chegg bets big on the AI that nearly broke it – Semafor

OpenAI Set to Make Super Bowl Ad Debut – Wall Street Journal  

OpenAI looks across US for sites to build its Trump-backed Stargate AI data centers - Washington Post

DeepSeek AI Is the Competition America Needs – Wall Street Journal

OpenAI may reveal reasoning steps behind outputs from its AI models, will consider open source approach – Business Insider  

European AI firms encouraged by DeepSeek in scramble to catch up to US - Semafor 

The AI Spending Race Is Still On as Google Antes Up – Wall Street Journal 

Why ‘Distillation’ Has Become the Scariest Word for AI Companies – Wall Street Journal

The DeepSeek app is impressively strange. It’s clever, quirky and self-censoring — but it’s the stuff behind the scenes that really matters. – Washington Post 

SoftBank in Talks to Invest as Much as $25 Billion in OpenAI – Wall Street Journal

What to Know About DeepSeek and How It Is Upending A.I. – New York Times

DeepSeek's great news for the corporate world - Axios

Reid Hoffman Raises $24.6 Million for AI Cancer-Research Startup - Wall Street Journal

Stunning breakthroughs from China's DeepSeek AI alarm U.S. rivals – Axios  

OpenAI introduced a new tool, called Operator, that can autonomously perform tasks on the internet – New  York Times 

South Carolina to Reboot Giant Nuclear Project to Meet AI Demand – Wall Street Journal 

Google rushed to sell AI tools to Israel’s military after Hamas attack – Washington Post   

OpenAI product chief says world is "on the verge" of AI agents - Axios

21 Recent Articles about Politics & AI

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Washington lawmakers weigh new artificial intelligence regulations - PBS

Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance - Washington Post 

AI systems with ‘unacceptable risk’ are now banned in the EU – Tech Crunch 

Will AI Regulation “Avoid Past Mistakes” or Just Make Different Ones? - Information Technology & Innovation Foundation 

Legal challenges await OpenAI chief as he visits India on global tour – Washington Post

The Manhattan Project Was Secret. Should America’s AI Work Be Too? - Wall Street Journal

Is China winning the AI race? – Washington Post  

Stunning breakthroughs from China's DeepSeek AI alarm U.S. rivals – Axios

The global struggle over how to regulate AI – Rest of World

South Carolina to Reboot Giant Nuclear Project to Meet AI Demand - Wall Street Journal

Trump Announces Private-Sector $500 Billion AI Infrastructure Investment – Unite 

Google rushed to sell AI tools to Israel’s military after Hamas attack – Washington Post  

China's AI keeps getting better — and cheaper – Axios

Joe Biden signs executive order to speed AI data center construction – The Verge

Sam Altman on ChatGPT’s First Two Years, Elon Musk and AI Under Trump – Bloomberg

A Book App Used AI to ‘Roast’ Its Users. It Went Anti-Woke Instead – Wired

Israel built an ‘AI factory’ for war. It unleashed it in Gaza. – Washington Post

Don’t Look Now, but China’s AI Is Catching Up Fast - Wall Street Journal  

Behind the Curtain: A chilling, "catastrophic" warning – Axios

House AI Report Lays the Foundation for a Clear, Credible U.S. Vision on AI Governance – Data Innovation

Generative AI bias poses risk to democratic values, research suggests – Phys.org

18 Recent Articles about AI & Journalism

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