48 posts tagged with "AI-Sovereignty-Governance"

Talofa reader,

I had an encounter the other week, with a smart, very capable young Pasifika person on my Discord who said they're not political because they're "either not interested in it or ... too busy living life and having fun to do anything about it".

And I went, "ooh, that's quite the take", and we went back and forth a few times, but ultimately we just parked it. I had to sit with it for a little while after, to figure out why that encounter really rubbed me the wrong way.

This isn't about this young Pasifika person, not at all. Everyone's free to their opinions and to live their own lives, 100%. So, given that, why did this irk me so much?

Talofa reader,

In 2001, a guy named Marc Prensky published an essay that shaped education policy for a decade. "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." The argument was: kids who grew up with computers think differently. They're wired for technology. They don't need to be taught how to use it — they already know.

Complete rubbish.

Talofa reader,

Anthropic dropped $8 million on a Super Bowl ad to tell you Claude is ad-free. I posted this about it the other week. The internet immediately started debating whether that's sustainable.

Anthropic pulls $4.5B from enterprise. OpenAI gets 75% from consumers. Both are burning billions. Which model wins?

I got into a thread about this on LinkedIn and someone brought up an interesting angle — what about companies that let you monetise your OWN data? What if the consumer gets a cut?

Which led me to River.

Talofa reader,

The argument that "AI is inevitable" has been accepted by tech and non-tech professionals alike, largely with muted reservation rather than loud proclamation. I've led workshops on generative AI, and the feeling from participants is that AI is a foregone conclusion:

"If you don't keep up, you'll be left behind."

They're not saying it because they're convinced about the technology, but because of how it feels to be surrounded by it.

And that's the problem. This is a claim that needs to be scrutinised, because you may have more optionality than you're led to believe.

Talofa reader,

To say 2025 was a 'challenging year' would be the understatement of understatements. No, it wasn't challenging—it was full-on "masks off": power consolidation and imperial impunity on full display.

Yes, it's going to be one of those newsletters.

It's that wonderful, magical time of year where we get to reflect on everything that happened for us this year. The highs, the lows, the lessons learned and friends we made along the way. But in my heart of hearts, or at least if I'm getting it one hundred, I don't feel that way. At all.

Talofa reader,

I remember one of my first AI-related engagements with one of my highly capable AWS Partners, a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company, highly resourced. It was early 2024, and I was delivering a workshop on GenAI. I was talking with one of the company tech leaders, and I was a little surprised at how they were thinking about AI—essentially, off-loading a good chunk of the problem decisions to the LLMs, and little to no emphasis on context details and scope going either way: to, from and back to the LLM.

Talofa reader,

I know it's been some time between posts, but thanks for making the move with me from Substack to Beehiiv.

Talofa Reader,

We live in a simulation.

Or at least that's what it feels like right now.

But what's being simulated is living a normal life, with its ups and downs, in a world that "has its problems" but is otherwise unproblematic- apparently.

And it's a simulation because outside of this "bubble" or "delusion" a lot of very bad things are going on in the world.

That's the preface and pretext of this piece.

[[send tweet]]

Talofa reader,

It’s February already, but happy 2025, and gong xi fa chai 🐍 all the same!

This isn’t an actual post, but more of a “hey, checking in and letting you know I’ve got somerantswriting coming!”

This is already shaping up to be a weird year, what with everything going on in AI, U.S. Politics, our shitty politics and just the overall decline of human society (😂😭).