Robotics/AI

REMEMBER HOW THE DOT.COM BUBBLE KILLED THE INTERNET?:

A.I. Is a Bubble. Maybe That’s OK. (Mohamed A. El-Erian, 11/20/25, NY Times)

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But what if the bubble is an inevitable part of developing and adopting a revolutionary tool that will fundamentally improve productivity and growth? After all, A.I. is a general-purpose technology that will most likely alter a vast range of economic activities fundamentally. Its transformative potential could be on par with electricity, offering an enormous upside through durable improvements in what we do and how we do it. It’s not just that many existing activities will be done better and more efficiently. A.I. is poised to open the door to discoveries, particularly in health and education.

Such gains would allow the economy to grow faster without kicking off inflation, something economists describe as raising the “speed limit” for noninflationary growth. Increased productivity and a larger economy provide us with more opportunities to address the problems that my generation is leaving our kids and grandkids: high levels of debt, climate change and excessive income inequality.

Whichever way you look at it, the potential payoffs of A.I. adoption are staggering — for the economy, for social sectors, and, of course, for investors. That could not be said for the majority of the big historical bubbles, such as the tulip mania of the early 17th century.

PICK THE LOW HANGING FRUIT FIRST:

AI in Medicine: Separating Silicon Valley Dreams from Scientific Reality (Mohammad FarhanNovember 16, 2025, Fair Observer))

During the COVID-19 pandemic, AI helped identify promising drug candidates and accelerated vaccine development timelines. Large language models are now scanning millions of research papers to identify potential therapeutic connections that would take human researchers years to discover.

Meanwhile, in neuroscience, AI is being used to decode brain signals from paralyzed patients, enabling them to control computer cursors and robotic arms with unprecedented precision. Brain-computer interfaces powered by machine learning are translating neural activity into text, giving voice to patients who have lost the ability to speak. Researchers are using AI to map neural circuits with cellular precision and simulate brain networks that were previously too complex to model.

In structural biology, AI has achieved remarkable breakthroughs in protein structure prediction, which have major implications in drug discovery. Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold can now predict how proteins fold with stunning accuracy, solving a puzzle that has stumped scientists for decades. This matters because understanding protein structure is fundamental to developing new treatments for human diseases.

In drug discovery, we’re seeing real progress too. Companies like Exscientia made history with the molecule DSP-1181, the first AI-designed drug to enter human clinical trials for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder. In-silico Medicine became the first company to advance an AI-designed drug for an AI-discovered target into clinical trials — a “double first” where AI handled both target identification and drug design. Others, like Recursion Pharmaceuticals, have used AI to identify new drug targets and advance candidates like REC-1245 (an orally bioavailable molecular degrader of the RNA-binding protein 39) for solid tumors from discovery to pre-clinical testing in just 18 months, less than half the typical timeline.

IF IT TASTES LIKE MEAT IT’S MEAT:

Humans can no longer tell AI music from the real thing: survey (AFP, November 12, 2025)

The polling firm Ipsos asked 9,000 people to listen to two clips of AI-generated music and one of human-made music in a survey conducted for France-based streaming platform Deezer.

“Ninety-seven percent could not distinguish between music entirely generated by AI and human-created music,” said Deezer.

WE AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET:

This AI Aced Hurricane Season in 2025. Here’s What That Means (Ellyn Lapointe, November 9, 2025, Gizmodo)

Though Google DeepMind’s Weather Lab only began releasing forecasts in June, it was by far the best model for predicting hurricane track and intensity this season, according to a preliminary analysis by Brian McNoldy, a meteorologist and senior researcher at the University of Miami. Meanwhile, America’s flagship weather model—the Global Forecast System—was the worst performing.

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:

Coupert: smart shopping extensions are changing the way people save money online (Jon Stojan, November 3, 2025, Digital Journal)

The core advantage is automation. Instead of copying and pasting codes from coupon sites, smart tools like Coupert apply discounts instantly. Cashback rewards are layered in, and price history helps users identify better deals.

Honey: Applies automatic coupons but lacks integrated cashback features.
Rakuten: Provides strong cashback rates but requires manual activation and no coupon testing.
Capital One Shopping: Useful for price tracking, weaker in coupon coverage.
Ibotta: Well-known in groceries, but its receipt-based model is less efficient for online shopping.
RetailMeNot: Popular coupon site, but prone to expired and unverified codes.

Coupert integrates all of these features. Users save an average of $180.12 annually on coupons, $86.92 through cashback, and $333.74 via price tracking.

HOLD THE SABOTS!:

AI Pessimism Fades as Reality Takes Hold (Brent Orrell, 10/30/25, AEIdeas)

In a large-scale Harvard Business School survey of 2,357 adults evaluating AI usage in 940 occupations, they found that reactions depend on how AI’s role is described. When AI was presented as a tool that augments rather than replaces human labor, a majority of Americans supported its use in 94 percent of occupations. Even when AI was described as fully automating core job tasks, respondents favored its use in 58 percent of occupations if it could outperform humans at a lower cost.

The key is specificity. When AI’s potential benefits are explained concretely—faster diagnoses, fewer repetitive tasks and injuries, better scheduling—attitudes shift from fear to interest. In the abstract, AI feels threatening; in context, it often looks like a gift.

IT’LL NEVER FLY, ORVILLE:

Q&A: How speciality retailers are winning the holiday season with agility and AI (yDr. Tim Sandle, October 28, 2025, Digital Journal)

Stern: Independent retailers plan for the holidays with precision, not prediction. They don’t have the purchasing power or storage space typically needed to pre-purchase on a large scale before the holidays. Their budgets are tighter, which forces smarter buying: every order has to earn its place on the shelf, and business owners have to be flexible to find the right product at the right price.

What’s changed in the past few years is how technology makes that kind of precision possible. AI tools can now surface insights that used to take hours of manual tracking: showing which products are trending, how pricing shifts might affect demand, or when to reorder based on sell-through velocity. For a specialty retailer, that kind of intelligence helps them compete with enterprise retailers that have dedicated analytics teams. This technology gives small retailers the same visibility into market trends and customer behavior that big chains have, but with the speed and context that fits how they actually operate.

ONE APOCALYPSE AFTER ANOTHER:

dive bar ai slop! decline of the novel! david copperfield! (Tara Isabella Burton, Aug 29, 2025, The Lost Word)

Here’s what I’ve been wrestling with. Whenever I want to smash a subway screen displaying advertisements for full-body deodorant, I remember that the invention of writing, the invention of the printing press, the invention of any technology that allows for the faster dissemination of information from one person’s brain to another, must also have felt apocalyptic. How can I defend myself as a novelist, as any kind of writer – how can I understand the purpose of what I love – while simultaneously decrying the creative potential of a different epoch-shift. How can I devote my life to one form of imaginative technology while worrying that another will erode our fundamental humanness?

If humanness even can be eroded. Even the most apocalyptic concerns about technology seem to me predicated that there are elements of our fundamental humanness that technology can take away from us, that there is a point beyond which the beings that we become no longer count as meaningfully human in the same way, and thus that we need a new theological anthropology to account for it. At which technological horizon does history end and the eschaton begin?

This means something for me as a Christian, too. My entire theological worldview, after all, is predicated on this idea that the word made flesh is a foundationally true way of understanding God’s existence in the world. The incarnate Christ is also a paradigm of the relationship between human language – and with it, human technological expansion of our imaginations – and the reality it either represents, or alters. We are, after all, in the imago dei, and that seems to mean something about our creative capacities. To say anything about God, from a Christian perspective, is also to say something about human language and, yes, technology. And if we grant that we are on the cusp of, if we have not already surpassed, an era-defining shift (be it the Internet, more broadly; smartphones more specifically; generative AI more specifically), we do, I think, need to ask ourselves what all this means vis a vis the wider cosmic story.

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:

AI Is Radically Democratizing Legal Services (Jack Nicastro and Samuel Crombie, 8/05/25, Fusion)

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to leave no corner of American society unaltered, and the legal system is no exception. Dr. Bateman believes AI will birth an inequitable and disorderly justice system. On the contrary, we believe AI is positioned to be an ultimate equalizer of justice.

AI is cheap and fast intelligence; intelligence facilitates truth-seeking, and it is truth-seeking that is the primary function of our courts. Bateman fears that AI adoption will be an ultimatum for the rule of law, or an epistemic weapon of mass destruction. We believe it is functionally identical to previous technologies adopted by courts to improve the truth-seeking process.

AI is a broad term for a broad set of technologies. U.S. courts are similarly decentralized in structure and diverse in function. Through his piece, Bateman conflates distinct parts of the justice system (impact statements, evidence rules, representation) and distinct AI technologies (chatbots, deepfakes, audio cloning) with one another. In our response, we clarify the different forms of courtroom AI and consider the unique operating procedures and rules of different parts of the legal system.

In explaining how AI could be used and in what contexts, we challenge his assertions that it will weaken the foundations of our justice system. Bateman envisages a world where legal criterion and judicial precedent evaporates, while agents of the court cease to operate rationally. Through the examples he offers, Bateman fundamentally misinterprets the court’s present frustrations, e.g., a victim impact statement made with prejudice, an unlicensed attorney practicing law, the introduction of falsified evidence, &c., as essential to AI. They are not. 

We confront his conclusion that AI is outpacing prudence and reach the conclusion that it is luddism that is imprudent. AI is nothing more than a tool. An auditable, increasingly interpretable, unprecedentedly powerful tool for ascertaining and evaluating the truth. Judges, juries, public defenders, court clerks, self-representing defendants, expert witnesses, and mediators all stand to benefit from AI.