Updates on the Newsletter, Podcast, and More!

Plus some additional thoughts on the politics of AI

This is one of those weeks where I wish my only job was being able to write this newsletter and opine on the news of the day. There’s so much going on.

However, I’m in Austin this week for work and SXSW, and my time for writing is limited. I originally wrote a piece on Sunday about how Spring is almost here, the joy of waking up to birds chirping, and how I now set my new year goals and intentions in Spring versus the New Year.

Then, I started to read and hear about interesting things I wanted to comment on. There’s a ton happening in Mexico ahead of their elections and Ben Thompson wrote a follow up column that had me doing one of those hand to head moments of “duh!, why didn’t I think of that.”

I can’t go in-depth on it all here right away. So instead, I’m giving you a cliffs notes version of my reaction to Ben’s column and then going into a little update from me about my goals for this newsletter, the podcast, and a little news about finally writing my book.

And I’ll write about Mexico soon.

But first, here’s what I wanted to highlight about a follow-up column Ben Thompson did on Aggregator’s AI Risk. My takeaways:

1. Politics will define Internet 3.0. I think he’s 100% right that “the first phase of the Internet was defined by technology; the second by economics (i.e., Aggregators). This new era, though, [will] be defined by politics …” He wrote that in 2021, and we are in the thick of it now.

2. AI compressing results into one answer can amplify political concerns. Ben writes: “What I now appreciate, though, is that the abundance of supply also provided political cover for the Aggregators: sure, Google employees may have been distraught that Trump won, but Google still gave you results you were looking for. Facebook may have had designs on global community, but it still connected you with the people you cared about.

   
   ”Generative AI flips this paradigm on its head: suddenly, there isn’t an abundance of supply, at least from the perspective of the end users; there is simply one answer. To put it another way, AI is the anti-printing press: it collapses all published knowledge to that single answer, and it is impossible for that single answer to make everyone happy.”

3. Platforms could (emphasis mine) start personalizing results by personalizing prompts. I’m a little embarrassed I hadn’t thought about the ability to personalize the prompts and thus results that someone might get from an AI tool. Ben’s point that transforming “the AI from being a sole source of truth dictating supply to the user, to one that gives the user what they want” might be the answer feels only partly right to me. But, it is a question to dig into more.

I still don’t agree with Ben that there’s some way for Google to go completely a-political. Like I said last week, while many of the tech company decisions may not be rooted in politics, they will become political, and that will have an impact. I think that’s what Ben is saying about the Internet 3.0 being defined by politics. No matter what, politics is going to influence things. Lot’s more to ponder, but onto the personal update.

I want to start by sharing a bit about my motivations and priorities.

I love my work. I love being able to work on challenging problems while also being able to set more of my schedule. Since I finished Kara Swisher’s memoir, Burn Book, I’ve considered how she said she’s a bad employee and works better for herself. My financial planner said something similar: once people realize they can make money on their own, they rarely return to a corporate gig.

That’s what makes working at Duco fantastic. While in an organization, I’ve got skin in the game regarding how well we do, and it allows me to amplify the consulting work I like to do. I have loved being able to work across a cross-section of the tech industry. I’m busy, but it’s a good busy. My hope/goal is to do this for a year or two and financially be in a spot where I can invest more in myself and my ideas.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about what motivates me and my priorities. I like looking around corners. I enjoy helping others. I enjoy writing and being creative. Someone I had never met the other day told me that they didn’t see me as a whistleblower but more like a truthteller, and that’s why they listened anytime they saw me quoted somewhere. That was one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever gotten. I want to work on tough problems by being unique and helpful. I also want to do so with integrity. 

At the same time, I want to take better care of myself. I want to start a habit of walking more in the morning. I’m trying to slow down more and continue to work on my spirituality. I’m thinking more about what kinds of relationships I want and need. I’m journaling about that and thinking about how I might fulfill those. Spending time with friends in San Francisco, DC, and Austin has helped a lot in recognizing what fills me up versus what drains me.

I’m thinking a lot about 2025 and beyond. I’ve written about this a bit on how I like to do long-term planning and how I’ve been mapping out my next chapter. I’ve not made many decisions yet, but this past week, I took a big, important step for something I’ve been thinking about for quite a few years - I signed with a hybrid publisher to do my tech and elections book. Subject to change, but I hope to do part of the history of how tech has impacted elections/politics while weaving in my personal stories and experiences. The goal will be to publish sometime next Summer or early Fall.

I’ve got a lot of plans for the newsletter and podcast as well. I’ve got Ana Khizanishvili, who has helped me a ton on the elections calendar and other things, helping me with the Panic Responsibly site and other projects. At Duco, we’re hiring a marketing and comms intern to help with our newsletter, podcast and other projects. This will allow me to expand what we can do with these outlets even more - because before, I was doing much of it on my own.

Over the coming weeks, you’ll see some additions and changes to the newsletter. Thanks to their support in putting this together, I’ll be mentioning Duco in the footer. From time to time I will highlight work we can talk about publicly and when I do so I’ll be transparent the role I/we played. I’m also considering what sponsorship might look like. If I take money for anything, you’ll know.

The first official episode of season two of the podcast is coming out tomorrow! It’s a conversation with Democracy Works CEO Luis Lozada about what goes into pulling together information from thousands of election officials about where, when, and how to vote so that companies like Google and Facebook can easily make that available to their users.

I think this season will mostly be interviews again. I really want to find a way to do a more structured show where we go deep into various impossible tradeoffs companies have had to grapple with. Once we have that intern, I’ll have the producing help I’ll need to do that. 

On top of all this I need to start doing more video. All three mediums - text, audio, and video - are necessary to have a broad reach. I’m going to start by doing these with the podcast. Follow me on Instagram or the YouTube channel to see these. I use Riverside.fm for all my recordings, and it makes creating short clips for Instagram and longer ones for YouTube so easy. 

I want to end by thanking you all for reading and your support. It continues to mean a lot to me and helps me keep doing this weekly. 

If you have any ideas or things you’d like to see please reach out! 

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