Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky

This post is a parable. I tell the story of the long history of the government looking to regulate a core technology—encryption—as a way of looking at what many are either asking the government to do or more recently what members of Congress are insisting the government must do with respect to artificial intelligence.

It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead! —Reese, Kyle Sergeant/Tech-Com, DN38416 Come with me if you want to live. —Also, Reese We are not facing an existential crisis of computing, and we are not facing a new enemy for which we have no defe…

Xeet from Director OSTP and a quote from Anthropic policy leader. This post discusses the broader concept of this effort. This above makes me sad. It always makes me sad to see tech companies in litigation in general and in IP litigation specifically. This compounds when any company seeks to do so under the cover of using the whole of government, trade l…

This week the University of Chicago Law School announced a new policy regarding the use of AI in teaching law. The headlines read “AI strategy bans phones, laptops in class for first year students.” What does history say about this sort of action so soon in the evolution and understanding of a new technology? Whether this is the right thing for a short time, a new long-term approach to knowledge tools, or a step backward is the subject of much debate.

I was (super) excited to pick up my Mac Neo today. Got the Citrus/512GB. I am completely blown away by it. It is a paradigm shifting computer. But I also have to say it made me a bit melancholy, and I’ll explain why. This is an indulgent post but it has been a decade in the making and it just took today’s Neo to put it all in perspective. Consider this my “review”. I set it up via migration and was up and running quickly.

Too much of what is going on with AI is a race to get to a theoretical end state of a whole new world of business and technology. Many pushing this were around for the tail end of the transition to an internet-based economy and are struggling with what appears to be a “compressed timeline,” much the way people record disruption as a “moment” versus a journey.

CES is a trade show and not a broad consumer event. It just so happens that it attracts so many in the industry that it has often been covered as a broad interest news event. My sense is the coverage was somewhat muted this year (judging by the extremes of X and CNN) but I have a theory as to why. The show had on display extremes of innovation.

This post was originally published for the Windows team (and extended audience) on my Microsoft SharePoint site and shared with key people at the Gates Foundation. It is reproduced as originally posted.

What a year it has been. It has also been a year where I chose to read books from a wide range of topics, some well outside the technology and innovation non-fiction I almost exclusively read. With books on Apple, Nvidia, China, and AI there was plenty in my traditional wheelhouse—some very good and some not so much IMO. Like many hot topics there were often multiple books from different perspectives so I was glad to find the one I might recommend to someone looking for one.

This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts