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What Is It and Isn’t?

In the absence of numerical evidence, marketing defaults to experiential language when selling a process or idea.

AI is so smart it can translate "vibes" into fully fledged lines of code.

The advertised value of AI is shifting away from the quantitative boon of explosive productivity to the qualitative swoon of its effect upon us. That isn’t to say pair programming with an AI assistant isn’t useful or even powerful. This entire site was built using Grok as a means to accelerating production, but it wasn’t a transcendent experience.

The reality of the matter is far closer to this:

In [Andrej] Karpathy's telling, "vibe coding" means he can "just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy-paste stuff, and it mostly works."

In building this site, that was my exact experience: AI mostly worked.

Digital Dialect

The effect that AI as a tool has upon its wielder should not be underestimated. It will change the way we make sense of the world around us in the same way that the limitations and idiosyncrasies of the language you speak shapes the nuance of how you understand your environment.

AI is the next layer in the strata of computer languages as they transition from the incomprehensibility of binary to the human-readability of natural-language syntax—for example, from machine language, a low-level language, to JavaScript, a high-level language. That is, one language sitting on top of another in order to simplify and expedite code creation by a human programmer. In more technical terms, this is known as “language implementation.” For example, the implementation language of PHP is C.

But I digress.

This dogpiling of prebuilt programming solutions (i.e. objects, methods, etc.) will continue until the vector of influence changes and human language starts conforming to the idiosyncrasies of AI prompt-driven linguistics. Or simply put, artificial intelligence will eventually change human languages as much as we have changed computer languages.

If you’re a coder, you already know: There just aren’t as many jobs as there used to be.

Tim Paradis at Business Insider takes a less-than-penetrating look into the job market for software developers, but he did include a link to a Federal Reserve Bank chart that plots the change in the number of job postings on Indeed.

Beginning in 2020, the chart shows a meteoric rise of software development job postings into the second quarter of 2022. A rise to over 230% from the February 1, 2020 numbers. Job postings have since fallen to approximately 63% of February, 2020.

According to the article, the primary driving factor is the use of artificial intelligence. It’s making individual coders more efficient and more productive thereby rendering larger teams obsolete.

For those of us in the industry, as the above quote observes, the chart is unnecessary. If we haven’t already been laid off, we’re waiting for that Muskian email asking us to justify our employment. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, we all have a front row seat for a modern reimagining of Death of a Salesman, and we don’t need the Fourth Estate talking us through the play.

The relaunch of Digg envisions a new era of user interactions denuded of “misinformation, spam, and the emotional toll of navigating hostile interactions.”

The new twist will be the use of artificial intelligence to create a more-human experience:

By combining Ohanian's and Rose's historical knowledge and deep understanding of what has and hasn't worked from their experiences at Reddit and Digg with today's technological advancements – particularly in AI – Digg plans to become an online destination with humanity and connection at its core.

As of this posting, the homepage redirects to a subdomain with a landing page collecting email addresses.

Elon Musk confirmed that the social media platform X was the victim of a “massive cyberattack” today. The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack was perpetrated by the cyber warfare group Dark Storm Team.

Orange Cyberdefense reported that the group has a pro-Palestinian agenda and recently pledged to launch a series of cyberattacks targeting government websites of NATO countries, Israel, and other nations supporting Israel. (Hindustan Times)

There is no information on the group in the MITRE ATT&CK® database. However, Musk reported that the attack originated from IP addresses within Ukraine. Both of these data points suggests an (ostensibly) ideologically-motivated group with no qualms for hacking-for-hire opportunities.

Humanoid Robots

The quest for domesticated automatons is bringing to market new aspirants on the daily. Figure.ai isn’t a johnny-come-lately, but it has recently announced its robotic humanoids, the Figure-02, will have a hive mind called Helix AI to enable organized operation. They anticipate an accelerated timeline to getting robots into your pantry.

• Further reading: Yahoo! News

Quantum Computing

Microsoft has announced its Majorana 1 quantum computing chip. The most notable distinction is its “Topological Core” architecture. However, keywords in Microsoft’s celebratory article like “expects,” “progress,” and “offer a path” paint an optimistic portrait of the world to come; but the language of the publication do not indicate efficacious operation in the here and now.

• Further reading: Microsoft