Reboot (Newsletter)

The cover of Kernel Magazine Issue 6, by the excellent Kristy Gao Next week, we’re publishing FEED, the fifth issue of Kernel Magazine, Reboot’s print publication. This issue was an absolute joy to make, and I’m very excited to see it out in the world.

Today, models are trained on a corpus of knowledge, composed of what humans have chosen to record and the traces they’ve left behind. Building agents that work like experts requires codifying tacit expertise: procedural knowledge that is so internalized and actionable that experts themselves struggle to articulate it. But externalizing tacit knowledge is an open problem: when processes are documented at all, they tend to be retrospective and incomplete.

Over the course of the last century, one particular, calculating form of rationality has gone from a narrow mathematical framework to an organizing logic for much of society. Mathematical rationality has become part of how we understand everything from pharmaceutical trials and machine learning models to sports strategy and, for some, the decision-making of everyday life. But is the adoption of mathematical rationality in itself irrational?

Hi all, I’m very excited to announce that pitches for the sixth issue of Kernel Magazine are now open! TL;DR: submit your pitches here (nonfiction) or here (creative) by February 20. Kernel 6’s theme is FEED. In this issue, we’re exploring all the ways that consumption shapes our relationship to technology; what we feed upon, how it feeds upon us, and all the strange metabolic interactions in between.

Highly-paid “expert” data labelers are behind many of the most recent advances in AI capabilities, even as these workers experience the same indignities as earlier generations of online gig workers. Today’s essay highlights the absurdity of the situation.

Here at Reboot, we don’t tend to think of ourselves as forecasters. But the start of a new year is the ideal excuse to share our rigorously vibe-researched tech and culture predictions, from the future of academia to microsite design trends. Presenting: 2026 ins & outs, courtesy of the editorial board: What’s chic, blurry, and various shades of vague?

This holiday season, give the gift of little tech magazine. For a limited time only (one week!) Kernel issues 3, 4, and 5 are 33% off in our shop.

This week we have an interview with Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, artist-musicians whose AI projects are as invested in developing new protocols for cultural production as they are in technical experimentation. Quincy’s conversation with them comes on the heels of their latest exhibition opening, and reveals how central collectivity is to their practice.

It’s been approximately three years since the launch of ChatGPT vaulted “A(G)I” into public consciousness. No coincidence that, around the 2.5-3 year mark, a bunch of AI books have now hit the market…. Jasmine, Jacob, Shira, and I talk through as many as we can get to in this long(! sorry) podcast.

We now live in a world of LLM girlfriends, AI-assisted suicides, and VCs and pop stars alike getting “one-shotted” by ChatGPT. For many daily users, chatbots have become a more trusted friend/adviser/colleague than any human confidante. It’s easy to gawk at these stories and assume it could never happen to us. So when my friend Anthony pitched me on telling his own story of experiencing AI-induced psychosis, I felt it was an especially important one to share with the Reboot audience.