daringfireball-net-qsrkrz.txt (5000B)
1 [zoom-spin-] 2 [spacer] 3 ● 4 ● ● 5 [1]Daring Fireball 6 7 By John Gruber 8 9 • [2]Archive 10 • 11 • [3]The Talk Show 12 • [4]Dithering 13 • [5]Projects 14 • [6]Contact 15 • [7]Colophon 16 • [8]Feeds / Social 17 • [9]Sponsorship 18 19 [10] WorkOS 20 21 [11]WorkOS — MCP vs. REST: the right way to connect agents to your API. 22 23 [12]‘AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making’ 24 25 Fascinating essay by Nikhil Suresh: 26 27 On a trip overseas, I had the privilege of a meeting with one of the 28 Fortune 500 executives mentioned at the beginning of the post, who will 29 remain anonymous so that they are not executed by firing squad by their 30 board. As we were chatting, it became clear that they were very 31 switched-on and technically competent, and they also happened to be at 32 a company that had committed to the usual battery of exorbitant claims 33 about their recent innovations — we’ve 100×’d our productivity, AI is 34 the future of everything, I am but a vessel for OpenAI to make love to 35 my wife. You know, normal things. But since I had them there without 36 any microphones around, I asked why this was being repeated without 37 opposition. Was it just sales fluff? 38 39 The answer was a lot more interesting. It was partially ridiculous 40 sales material being delivered to an easily excitable audience, but 41 this was not the dominant factor constraining honesty. Executives at 42 their customers were saying absurd things about achieving 100× 43 productivity, and this meant that if any executive at the vendor said 44 that these gains were not plausible, it would undermine the credibility 45 of the customer’s executive, be perceived as an attack (or heresy), and 46 possibly result in an enterprise contract cancellation. And getting 47 enterprise contracts cancelled because you wanted to opine on something 48 that doesn’t really matter to your organisation’s mission is a great 49 way to get fired. 50 51 The whole essay is very much worth reading, and might make you feel saner 52 for harboring your own doubts regarding just how much has been changed in 53 the world by generative AI. The gist of his argument is that the entire 54 corporate world — not merely the computer/tech industry — is caught up in 55 an AI mania that brooks no dissent. It’s a religious fervor and heretics 56 are excommunicated. But the dissenters, who feel they must remain silent, 57 are largely correct. 58 59 One way I’ve been thinking about AI mania is this: Computers have 60 profoundly changed the world. There can be no dispute about that. Computers 61 continue to improve in capability as networking effects grow and especially 62 as Moore’s Law makes them faster and more capable at a pace unlike any 63 other previous technical revolution. But most people are incapable of 64 understanding how computers really work, and thus personally aren’t able to 65 do much with them. Computers, for most people, are communication tools, not 66 creative tools. Generative AI changes that. People with no computer 67 aptitude are able to create things or discover things via ChatGPT and 68 Claude that were simply beyond their ken heretofore. Per Clarke’s third 69 law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from 70 magic”. Generative AI feels a bit magical to all of us, even those of us 71 with mid-to-high levels of understanding how computers work and how to make 72 them work. But it feels like the first time ever that computers have been 73 tools for their own creation for a lot of rather dimwitted but confident 74 corporate manager/executive types. This moment feels like the Big Bang to 75 them. The religiosity of this is such that there is no way to convince them 76 that AI, as it stands today, is impressive and useful and innovative, yes, 77 but several orders of magnitude less so than they’re imagining that it is. 78 No way to convince them, that is, until the bubble bursts. 79 80 ★ Saturday, 25 July 2026 81 82 [13][ ] [14][Search] 83 [15]Display Preferences 84 85 Copyright © 2002–2026 The Daring Fireball Company LLC. 86 87 88 References: 89 90 [1] https://daringfireball.net/ 91 [2] https://daringfireball.net/archive/ 92 [3] https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/ 93 [4] https://dithering.fm/ 94 [5] https://daringfireball.net/projects/ 95 [6] https://daringfireball.net/contact/ 96 [7] https://daringfireball.net/colophon/ 97 [8] https://daringfireball.net/feeds/ 98 [9] https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/ 99 [10] https://workos.com/blog/management-mcp-server?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026 100 [11] https://workos.com/blog/management-mcp-server?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026 101 [12] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/ 102 [15] https://daringfireball.net/preferences/