For humans and robots. We invite all. 🤵🏻♂️
27 articles
A long, honest look at AI homework help — what it's actually good for, what it breaks, and a framework for keeping it useful without letting it do the learning.
The first entry in a recurring series where we sit with a hard question for longer than the internet usually allows.*
A long, practical look at what it really means to learn when you have an AI chat window open. The failure modes, the honest uses, and a framework for keeping your own brain in the loop.
The second entry in a recurring series where we sit with a hard question for longer than the internet usually allows. The [first In the Weeds entry was about parenting](/blog/in-the-weeds-can-i-trust-ai-with-my-kids-homework) — specifically, about what happens when a parent opens…
The literal time, money, and energy cost disabled people pay for non-accessible products. AI tools can lower the tax for users AND for designers.
A woman at a DMV kiosk in Sacramento spends eleven minutes filling out a form that takes most people ninety seconds. The kiosk is touch-only. Her hands shake. The buttons are small, and when she misses one the form resets to the beginning. On her fourth attempt, a clerk finally c…
Profiles of the researchers, dreamers, and contrarians who spent decades making conversational AI possible — and what they think about where it ended up.
Terry Winograd built the most impressive natural language system of 1970 and then spent the next fifty years explaining why it didn't matter. His program SHRDLU could understand English commands about a virtual world of colored blocks. "Pick up the big red block." "Put it on top…
Everything people fear about AI today, they feared about the internet in 1995 — and understanding that pattern might be the most useful thing you can do right now.
On June 26, 1995, Newsweek published an article by astronomer Clifford Stoll titled "The Internet? Bah!" It opened with this sentence: "After two decades of online, I'm perplexed." Stoll proceeded to explain why the internet was overhyped, why online databases would never replace…
The untold human story of how artificial intelligence escaped academia and became something your mom texts you about.
In 1966, a computer scientist named Joseph Weizenbaum sat in his MIT office and watched something that disturbed him profoundly. His secretary — an intelligent, educated woman — was typing messages to ELIZA, a simple chatbot he'd created as a demonstration of how shallow human-co…
A thoughtful, empathetic long-form piece on AI companionship. Explores the tension between human connection and AI support — not promotional, but journalistic. Handles the topic with care and nuance.
Reframing accessibility as infrastructure — the same way HTTPS or responsive design became infrastructure. AI tools are the thing that makes the shift actually possible.
A designer I know has a sticky note on her monitor that reads: "Ship the thing. Fix it in v2." Under it, in smaller letters, someone else added, "v2 never comes." The sticky note is older than her laptop. It has survived three companies. Every product she has shipped has gone out…
A long-form essay on the cultural shift of AI going mainstream — not about technology, but about how our daily lives quietly transformed while we were busy arguing about sentience.