As I often paraphrase from the first Captain America movie, AI will take the good and make it better, and take the bad and make it worse. The present-day education system is a model developed in the early 1900s, funded by Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, Ford, and the barons of the day to manufacture obedient workers…
The thing about generative AI optimization or whatever it is you want to call it, is that when models run into low confidence answers in most tools these days, what do they do? That’s right, they trigger a web search. So if you’re good at regular SEO, you’ve got 90% of the problem solved for…
Summary In today's episode, I explain why creators should judge content that AI writes by its quality and customer value rather than reject it solely because a machine wrote it. Here's what this means for you. You should use AI when it produces a better result than you can provide alone, while investing upfront in…
3 receipts from MAICON Day 1: “The risk is not that AI does the work. The risk is that AI does the work and we never learn from it.” – Paul Roetzer quoting Tobi Lutke “In the Google Era, visible = recommended. In the AI Era, visible != recommended.” – Wil Reynolds “America now spends…
Summary In today's episode, I examine whether today's AI can feel pain, possess consciousness, or convincingly imitate both. Here's what this means for you. You need to distinguish sophisticated language and behavior from actual inner experience as you evaluate increasingly agentic systems. You'll also learn these concepts: how current silicon-based systems mimic pain without possessing…
Choose good or fast. There’s a knob with two settings when we’re using AI research tools: quality and speed. And there’s no middle setting, because a middle setting would deliver half-assed results that were neither fast nor correct. The more I use AI tools for research, the more I realize that you only get two…
_Almost Timely News: 🗞️ What Are Open Weights Models? (2026-10-18) :: View in Browser_ The Big Plug(s) 🚗 Missed MAICON 2026? You can catch the replay of my session here! ✍️ Enroll in my new course, AI for Writers and learn how to make AI write better. My Unofficial LinkedIn Algorithm Guide is updated for…
Leave Claude set on Opus 5.5 Medium. If you want the best blend of performance price brains and brawn, Anthropic pulled off something magical with Opus 5.5. It’s an extremely smart model, but it is also a parsimonious model. In the Artificial Analysis benchmarks, Opus 5.5 parallels the capabilities of Fable 5.1 in terms of…
It’s two weeks to one of the biggest events of the year, the annual Marketing AI Conference, MAICON, put on by SmarterX. Which means today, right now, is the perfect day to get your COVID and flu boosters if you’re planning to attend. Most vaccines take at least a week to ramp up, and you…
