{"id":404,"date":"2026-02-05T15:59:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/?p=404"},"modified":"2026-02-05T15:59:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:59:17","slug":"current-reading-grumpiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/05\/current-reading-grumpiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Current reading grumpiness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Currently reading:\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/books\/what-if-we-get-it-right-visions-of-climate-futures-ayana-elizabeth-johnson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">What If We Get Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures<\/a><\/em>, by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. The core of the book is a collection of interviews, including one with Mustafa Suleyman on the topic of AI. (Suleyman at one time was Google\u2019s VP of AI product management and AI policy.) I\u2019m more skeptical of Suleyman\u2019s statements than Johnson seems to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of my issues with the Suleyman interview:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>AI chat apps don\u2019t \u201cinteract with humans,\u201d any more than an echo interacts with humans.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Why does Suleyman dismiss universal basic income so glibly, when data shows it works? (Later in the interview he says \u201cWe have to embrace the reality of profit\u201d and claims anti-capitalism is harming the climate movement.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Oh, and stop talking mean about tech folks, he says. You\u2019re hurting the environment.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Suleyman agrees that AI needs to be regulated, but says we need regulators \u201cwho are deeply embedded in the technical details, who are able to move quickly, make mistakes, get it wrong, change course\u201d \u2014 which sounds like techbros who \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d and who will back off the minute the industry says \u201cYou\u2019re slowing us down, man.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Talking about how AI can help data centers manage their massive energy needs efficiently is like talking about how the dragon can help with the delivery of the 29 villagers per hour it needs to devour.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>This statement aged badly: \u201cBoth OpenAI and then Anthropic, the two main companies that came after us, and now my new company Inflection, all of us are focused on the question,\u00a0<em>What does safety look like?<\/em>\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>So many follow-up questions Johnson doesn\u2019t ask!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>To be clear, overall I think this is an important and useful book. But I have quibbles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Currently reading:\u00a0What If We Get Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures, by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. The core of the book is a collection of interviews, including one with Mustafa Suleyman on the topic of AI. (Suleyman at one time was Google\u2019s VP of AI product management and AI policy.) I\u2019m more skeptical of Suleyman\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/05\/current-reading-grumpiness\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Current reading grumpiness&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[55,56,26,57,25],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","tag-ai","tag-ayana-elizabeth-johnson","tag-books","tag-mustafa-suleyman","tag-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":405,"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bedriegerjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}