Quotes

For this [AI] not to be a bubble, by definition it requires that the benefits of this are much more evenly spread. I think a telltale sign of if it’s a bubble would be if all we’re talking about are the tech firms. If all we talk about is what’s happening to the technology side that then that’s just purely supply side.

Bald man wearing glasses, smiling.Satya Nadella,
CEO of Microsoft

I have some bad news for you, Satya…

In another excerpt from the interview, picked up by Pivot to AI, Nadella says that companies need to reorganize around AI to learn, in practice, how to use it in business. Destroy what is working to learn an innovation that might help them… do what they were doing before?

[…] What we’ve learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is they’re not buying based on AI. In fact I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps them understand a specific outcome.

White, unshaven man smiling.Kevin Terwilliger
Dell head of product

It is surprising that the first manufacturer to tell the truth about so-called “AI PCs” is Dell, Microsoft's early partner in the Copilot+ laptops initiative.

Note, however, that the full quote indicates that Dell will not stop investing in AI, only that the technology will no longer be the flagship feature of its marketing. It begins as follows: “We’re very focused on delivering upon the AI capabilities of a device—in fact everything that we’re announcing has an NPU in it—but what we’ve learned…”

Tech CEOs: Workers MUST be present in the office. The job simply cannot be done remotely.

Also tech CEOs: Most workers can be replaced by AI. Hosted remotely.

White woman, with glasses, sitting and wearing a free software T-shirt.SaraMG
@saramg@fosstodon.org

The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me.

A picture of Mustafa Suleyman.Mustafa Suleyman
CEO da Microsoft AI

Mustafa Suleyman’s outburst is a reaction to Windows 11 users’ criticism of another Microsoft exec, Pavan Davuluri, who said Windows is evolving into an “agentic” operating system.

“Agentic” is a euphemism tech execs use for “AI‑stuffed software that doesn’t work properly.” In the case of Windows 11, for example, Microsoft warns that AI “agents” can, among other things, install malware and expose private data. Yay…?

2005: Don’t trust anything you see on Wikipedia.

2025: Don’t trust anything you see online unless you saw it on Wikipedia.

White man, with glasses and goatee, smiling.Jason Lefkowitz
@jalefkowit@vmst.io

Sideloading is fundamental to Android and it is not going away. Our new developer identity requirements are designed to protect users and developers from bad actors, not to limit choice. We want to make sure that if you download an app, it’s truly from the developer it claims to be published from, regardless of where you get the app. Verified developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through sideloading or through any app store they prefer.

Google's logo, capital “G” colored.Google
via Android Developers Blog

The fact is that today, the open web is already in rapid decline.

Google's logo, capital “G” colored.Google
via Search Engine Roundtable

1

I never took the dead internet theory that seriously but it seems like there are really a lot of LLM-run twitter accounts now.

White man, with dark and short hair, with dark circles.Sam Altman
Co-fundador e CEO da OpenAI

If only we knew who was the “genius” who started all this mess…

We will not use an LLM to add a chatbot, a summarization solution or a suggestion engine to fill up forms for you, until more rigorous ways to do those things are available.

White man, with a beard and goatee, with short dark hair.Jon von Tetzchner
Vivaldi co-founder and CEO

In a moment of euphoria in which even Mozilla — which would have the most to gain from caution around reckless adoption of generative AI — at least one web browser embraces that stance.

Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.

— UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The absurd guidance is part of a list published by the UK government to mitigate the severe drought affecting England, alongside useless classics (“take shorter showers”) and other nonsense (“use water from the kitchen to water your plants”).

As David Gerard pointed out, the document makes no mention of the inefficiencies of (privatized) water companies nor the thirsty data centers focused on artificial intelligence. (The great irony is that the suggestion to delete emails to save water may have come from generative AI. Is this how AI will end humanity?)

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

White man, with beard and long hair, with glasses; in the background, wall with paintings.Marcus
@marcusjmerritt.com/Bluesky

Anonymous and mild sensibilities have currency because today’s music — whether created and curated by humans or machines — is so often used to make people feel nothing instead of something. […] This music is not meant to be listened to directly; it’s used to drown out everything else.

White man, with prescription glasses, black beard and long hair, black and straight. Black and white photo.Ian Bogost
The Atlantic

Ian reflects on the small success of Velvet Sundown, a band made by artificial intelligence that was already approaching 1 million streams on Spotify. “This is second-order music listening, in which you experience the idea of listening to music. What better band to provide that service than one that doesn’t even exist?”

All of these stories have the same intellectual validity as writing “I’m alive!” on a piece of paper, photocopying it, and then saying “Look! In our analysis, the photocopier says it’s alive!”

White man, short hair, prescription glasses with black frame.Benedict Evans
Issue #597 of his newsletter

The story he’s referring to is from an Anthropic “study” that found that generative AIs will “lie, cheat and steal” to achieve their goals. Yes, because they were instructed to do so.

In a quote attributed to Spotify founder Daniel Ek when speaking at a company all-hands, he says “Our only competitor is silence.” To which I say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

— Reuben Son.

In “Quiet Time”, Reuben delves into the genesis, reinterpretations, and paradigm shifts found in ambient music — a delightful coincidence in light of this post I recently published. Bonus points for starting with a quote from Clarice Lispector.