Newsletter 171. An appreciation of the flawed but still essential social platform, LinkedIn. Plus, all the ways scammers use AI to target authors, Anthropic’s gravity-defying IPO, book bans set a record, three people to follow, and three books to read. The value of social media I’ve been studying social media for almost 20 years now….
President Trump says that from this point forward, artificial intelligence will be known as super intelligence. He has issued an executive order to that end. I have a great deal of experience with attempts to rename technology. As analysts, we often tried to name new things so that people would give us credit for identifying…
Newsletter 170. The America.gov chatbot persists in telling the truth — but how long will that last? Plus, is teaching writing necessary, Sony ditches CES, three people to follow, three books to read, and a chance to tell us what you really think. Is America.gov a traitor or a patriot? The US Federal government announced…
In the Classic Star Trek episode “The Ultimate Computer,” most of the crew of the Starship Enterprise are removed and replaced with the ultimate in automated starship operations, the M-5 Multitronic unit. It operates efficiently — faster and better than the crew — until of course it goes rogue and disables and kills crew of…
Newsletter 169. Now that AI can write, we must change how we inspire students. Plus, the disaster of corporate slop grenades, editorial cheat sheets, three people to follow and three books to read. Teach writing as thinking In school, we’ve been teaching writing as a series of rules. Here is how to spell; here is…
When I get hired to edit a manuscript these days, the first thing I do is check whether it was created in whole or in part with AI. Around 90% of the book projects I work on now are at least partially AI-assisted. My clients are smart, busy, and tech-savvy, and most of them appear…
Newsletter 168. You can tap AI to help you write better — without bullsh*t. Plus, the AI doom talk could just be hype, a publisher that fails to market half its books, three people to follow and three books to read. Can AI help you write better? We all know AI is a terrible writer….
One principle is at the center of all debates about AI use: That AI makes workers more productive AI makes workers more productive. But what does productive mean? Based on my experience working with many people who’ve adopted AI in their work — as well as the results of last year’s AI and the Writing…
Working with AI on your book will enable you to polish your prose to a high sheen (just like all the other similar books). It will keep your work nice and neat and free from grammatical (if not factual) errors. It might even give you a new idea or two (new to you, that is…