Image by anne773 from Pixabay

If you get far enough into it with the LLM crowd (the ones who insist on calling what they're doing “artificial intelligence” as if they're talking about Data or Hal), they'll tell you it doesn't matter if we burn the planet achieving “AGI.” Why? Because it will give us the solutions to the environmental disaster we're in right now. It'll give us the solutions to our political differences. It'll solve world hunger, pollution, homelessness, poverty, and all our other ills.

Let's say we give birth to this AGI. Let's say that it has human like or human exceeding intelligence. Let's say it agrees to work with us on what we want it to do and what it asks for in return is something we're willing to give.

What makes them think that the answers it give us won't start with “you should have done the things you already knew how to do instead of burning everything into the ground making me”?

Today, when logging into Bluesky, I got a notice that Bluesky were changing their ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Policy (“effective September 15th, 2025”) and their Community Guidelines (“take effect on October 15th, 2025”). You can read Bluesky's official statement about this update on their blog entry Updated Terms and Policies published on August 14, 2025.

Unfortunately, the way these changes were handled are a huge problem.

But it is still pretty important

Image by Mayur Ankushe from Pixabay

Yesterday, I finished the first draft on a novella I wrote to kick off a mainstream SF adventure series. I've been struggling to make a different idea work for a few months and finally gave up on the idea (or at least set it aside indefinitely). I had no idea what I was going to write instead and I was months behind where I'd wanted to be with a mainstream pen.

And then a fateful Saturday morning, I went to bed after feeding my cats, and I dreamed. Just a snippet of a character in a vague setting.

Photo by Eri Krull on Unsplash

This article isn't about the ethics of how models are trained or the ecological consequences of their use. DeepSeek shows that models can be generated on lesser hardware and that massive data centers with huge ecological consequencees aren't required to operate them. DeepSeek doesn't demonstrate the viability of ethically producing a model.

DeepSeek doesn't build a tool that actually does the kinds of things that real people would need it to do in order to be an effective tool.

The Values of Work by Jenny Zhang caused something to click for me the other day. I started work in corporate environments when I was about 23. I don't think this will be news to most people reading it on Fediverse but there's a common idea in corporate environments: “(employee) doesn't take feedback well.” “It's important to take feedback well.” “You shouldn't make excuses or defend yourself when you receive feedback.”

There's a degree of reality to that concept. No one likes to be criticized. It can feel like an attack. If the feedback you receive is about actions you took because your manager didn't deal with a situation, it can feel all the worse to get that criticism from the same manager. If you went to your manager ahead of time and told them about the situation and asked for their help and they refused to do anything about it, it's going to be really difficult for you to hear their criticism. I've always heard it said that “criticism is a gift.” That's true to a point. If you buy me a knickknack from a gas station as a gift, that's still a gift. If you're low on money and that's all you can afford, I'd rather have the gift of spending time with you. If you as a manager can't give quality, well-considered, actionable feedback, maybe there's something else you can give your employee. Like quality time with a senior employee who moved up from the same role they have today.

That's not what this post is about. I just need it to illustrate what's bound to be a touchy topic: companies receive feedback from their employees very poorly.

This isn't either of the blogs I had planned for this week. I have a 90% written piece about why perfectly good computers aren't compatible with Windows 11. I also have about half of the background done on what I plan to be my first movie review here.

I have a favorite mug. It's not my “woke up sexy as hell again” mug but that one's definitely a good one. My favorite mug is part of a set. I inherited the set from someone who didn't want the set any more. Most of my ceramic is like that. A lot of my pots and pans too.