Hot takes on our future with AI
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Writers. Of this little book, let’s just say it’s quite keen on humans.
Meanwhile, here are eight hot takes on the latest problems, questions and opportunities AI is giving us. It was going to be just three, but the hot takes are coming thick and fast right now. If only there was a technology that could just summarise everything so we don’t have to read it. Until then…

- Economist Maximilian Kasy says AI has already seized The Means of Prediction, but it’s not be too late to do something about it (published October 2025).
- The sycophants will inherit the earth, or The machine began to waffle, by John Naughton.
- AI can’t break it, because higher education is already broken. Timothy Burke reflects on a painful diagnsis by T.J. Kalaitzidis. See also Joshua Kim’s Three Questions for Brown’s TJ Kalaitzidis.
- GenAI is “a tool powerful enough to explode many of our inherited pedagogies. That may not be a bad thing. From the ashes, we can build something more profound, more equitable: and more aligned with the realities of thinking and doing in the world.” - TJ Kalaitzidis How generative AI fixes what higher education broke
- Scholars are asking: What good is writing?
- According to Aaron Benanav, AI just makes work worse.
- AI is the new dumb waiter, says Douglas Rushkoff in conversation with Andrew Keen.
- Dror Peleg says AI is too busy to take our jobs. Also in conversation with Andrew Keen.
And do I have my very own hot takes on AI? Well yes, as it happens, I do.
- Gaslit by machinery that calls itself a person. It’s worse than a beehive in a raincoat.
- Jules Verne could have told us the Internet is not a real person. After more than a century, why do we keep falling for La Stilla Syndrome?
- Embracing your humanity is the way forward. It’s what we’ve got so we might as well lean into it.
- It’s a great time to be writing the future. Enough with the pessimism: let’s get to work!
- What comes after content? We’re finding new ways to create, and we always were.
- Soon we’ll all be writing the books we want to read. You pump your own gas, so why not write your own books? (Yes, it’s a provocation).
- Despite AI the Internet is still personal. A little love letter to writing online for fun and no profit.
- To understand the future of AI, look to the past. Look, they have this thing called history and we can learn from it.
- Another way we might change our speech and writing to subvert our digital overlords. I just want ChattyG to give me some fancy wordplay. Is that too much to ask? (Yes, it is).
Thanks for reading. Why not check out my book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters. And if you like this website, you can always sign up to the weekly email digest.