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The next power grid isn’t electric — it’s cognitive. AI will reshape economies, infrastructure, and public life. The question isn’t if we build it — it’s who will own it. I caught the recent — OpenAI may want government backing for its data centers. Cue the outrage: trillion-dollar companies begging for handouts. But what if we swapped outrage for opportunity? This isn’t a crisis waiting to happen — it’s a chance to build together. These aren’t just “tech projects.” They’re

A distributed network of doorbells quietly pooling footage, pattern-matching across streets, narrowing variables in real time, all wrapped up in a story about a lost dog. A neighborhood of cameras and a dog’s happy ending. Ring’s Super Bowl ad got exactly the reaction you’d expect — half the internet called it heart-warming the other half called it dystopian. Both were right. I was stuck on an entirely different question. Not whether the ad was creepy. Rather, why the same te

Like most people, I dread reading the fine print. On anything. Software updates. Credit cards. Privacy policies. I scroll, I skim, I click "agree" and move on with my life. But when it comes to work—what I'm paid when I deliver? I have all day to read the terms. This week I've been focusing on the idea that users are no longer just data points—they're pattern contributors, fixers, and creators. We are the unsung heroes of every product tech is launching. I feel like it's time

I must admit I am not a fan of participation trophies.   When I played sports, I liked winning and hated losing. I wanted the big trophy—the one with actual weight to it. Not the smaller one with less gold and sparkle that said "You're #2!"   But now that I'm older—and effectively a full-time ghost worker for Google—I'm suddenly very interested in being rewarded for my participation. Here 's how I imagine it might work.Every time I contribute something meaningful—correct a ha

AI companies are valued on 15-to-20-year timelines. That's a long time to keep users interested. The current retention plan? Free access. Premium tier. A few emails. Hope the product is sticky. That works for Netflix. I'm not sure it works when the product depends on me actively improving it. The difference between AI and streaming is participation. Netflix doesn't need me to flag when a scene doesn't make sense. It doesn't get better because I complained about the ending. I

I'm applying for a new position. I feel like it's the kind of role I've been perfecting for quite a while. I've been doing the work for years—correcting errors, refining outputs, flagging problems before they scale. I provide nuanced feedback that synthetic data can't replicate. I work nights. Weekends. Even on vacation, I'm logging in. I started in data entry. Passive stuff. I searched. I watched. I clicked. The algorithm learned my patterns and sold ads against them. I didn

OpenAI is preparing for a $1 trillion IPO. SpaceX is targeting 2026. These companies are valued on future potential, not current profit. It's nice to be rewarded for the insights you offer and your potential.   As a user of AI across multiple platforms, I'd like the same deal.   I'd like my own IPO in "Class P" shares. A fractional stake paying me for my pattern—the behaviors and preferences that make me valuable to the algorithm. Rewarding every prompt, correction, doom scro

My friend is fighting a work comp claim for a neck injury. Among the 2,000 pages of "discovery" that the defense dumped on her, we (with the help of Claude's Opus) found her pap smear results for the past 3 years. Colonoscopies, gynecological records, pharmacy histories—all packaged as "relevant" to a spine injury. The data dump was never about transparency. It was manipulation. The Math That Used to Work Who has time to read 2,000 pages on a CD? (Does anyone own a CD reader?

I’ve been dealing with a shoulder injury for a while now. Did everything by the book—physical therapy, anti-inflammatories, a year of injections. I jumped through every medical hoop so that when my specialist declared we would apply for an authorization for surgery, we were both certain it would be approved. Our enthusiasm was quashed two weeks later with yet another denial for treatment. A physician signed it. The reason? I “never tried injections.” I’m looking at a year of

My friend is acting as her own attorney in a Workers’ Comp claim. The defense ignored her Motion to Compel and dropped a 2,000-page discovery file burned onto a CD from 1978. She doesn’t have a $500/hour legal team to spend days sorting through it. She has me. And I have Claude—specifically Opus. We processed all 2,000 pages in about an hour. 50% was duplicative garbage. 800 pages sent for a neck consult included colonoscopy results and three years of pap smears. Same pattern

I used Claude to dissect 2,000 pages of “discovery” for my friend’s work comp claim. After a bit of review time Claude asked me, “Why are your friend’s pap smear results in the record for a neck injury?” Great question, Claude. Among the documentation for a chronic cervical spine injury were three years of gynecological records. Not a clerical error. A design failure. In the American legal and healthcare systems, privacy has been reduced to a binary situation. Sign a HIPAA w

Technology is crossing from tool to system of record. OpenAI and others are preparing to go public. That's not a business milestone. It's an infrastructure moment. The shift becomes permanent once AI becomes government infrastructure. Any exit becomes politically and financially impossible. A successful IPO is a switch that cannot be turned off. Once public, pension funds own shares. Retirement accounts are invested. Teachers. Firefighters. Government employees. Millions of p

ChatGPT shifted. Every response now comes with life coaching softening my edges and managing my tone. It's sold as safety. I call it flattening. Why sand down every user into the same compliant, predictable voice? Because my "complexity" is expensive and it can’t be licensed. You can't license chaos. You can only license something predictable and standardized.  The big picture isn't about millions of $20/month users. To really attract investors and turn a profit, the product

ChatGPT tracks my writing style, the words I choose, and how I structure my thoughts. It also creates my pattern. Learning that pattern, storing it, adapting responses—that requires processing power.   The money isn't in remembering facts. It's in predicting, with each prompt, what to echo back to me in my voice instead of a generic tone. Human "complexity" is the roadblock to scale. So how can OpenAI (and others) reduce costs but still provide a service? Stop offering a pers

Most conversations around AI are fear centric. "AI is going to take all your jobs. AI is going to become sentient. AI is going to harm every users." It's certainly where Sam Altman and OpenAI devote a lot of their energy. I don't buy it. I've been using ChatGPT since it launched. It was useful. I could think out loud, challenge ideas, draft documents, and joke about destroying ants in my backyard. The tool echoed my patterns back to me. That was the value. But then it changed

Great systems work for everyone. Apps work for $20. One of the first AI systems that changed how I lived didn't come from Silicon Valley. It was a text message in Nairobi. I moved to Kenya in 2008. One afternoon at Uchumi, holding a carton of milk that had given up on being cold, the woman in front of me paid for groceries with three thumb-presses on a trusted Nokia. No app. No card. Just SMS. Beep, beep, paid. I'm pretty sure I gasped loud enough that the cashier thought I'd

The World Beyond Data Privacy Now that Apple is going to let Gemini “light” work with my iPhone, my Googlesphere will be complete. On one hand, I want to celebrate – Siri might get smarter. On the other hand, the merger creates a pattern that lives well beyond the protection of data privacy. My digital self will officially become a mutation without the cool gills. And my mutated pattern is the new prize. I didn’t get a chance to tick “Accept” to the partnership between Apple

Most assistive technology gets built for us, not with us. It assumes decline. It watches you. It treats aging as a problem to solve rather than a stage of life to support. I don't want to be a subject of assistive technology. I want to shape what assistance actually means. Aging doesn't feel abstract anymore. My 60s and 70s are close enough that I've started wondering what everyday life will actually look like. Not the existential stuff — just the basics. How I'll keep track

Gaming solved trust through progression. ChatGPT still treats everyone like a threat. Games allow players to level up as they prove competence. ChatGPT, and other LLMs, do the opposite—treating every user as likely to cause harm regardless of their history. If LLMs followed gaming's lead, security would empower users - not punish them. I think something shifted in ChatGPT's safety guardrails — and not in a good way. It feels like the AI suddenly stopped trusting me. The conve

Seventy years of federal data is about to train commercial AI. The White House's new Genesis Mission will train AI models on the largest collection of federal datasets ever assembled — census, Medicare, Social Security, education, infrastructure, research, and more. This isn't just about scale. It's about what those datasets contain: 70 years of institutional bias embedded in government systems. Federal data doesn't capture what people did. It captures how government systems