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This is my bi-weekly “newsletter” delivered straight to your inbox with at least one guaranteed typo I’ll catch after hitting send! If email collectors’ items aren’t your thing, don’t hesitate to switch to the RSS feed or just bookmark loudpoet.com and check in now and then. You do you!

NOTE: Remember that vacation I was on a few weeks ago? It already feels like it’s been years, and I’m exhausted again. Is it too soon to start counting down to Memorial Day?

_ONE

“AI-first” is the new Return To Office | Anil Dash

If you think your workers and colleagues are too stupid to recognize good tools that will help them do their jobs better, then… you are a bad leader and should step down. Because you’ve created a broken culture.

I love it when Dash pulls out the brass knuckles on his tech colleagues, and he pulls no punches here, calling out executives who are shoving AI everywhere imaginable, whether there’s a legitimate use case or not. This time, the bizarrely beloved Duolingo became the Main Character for a few days across multiple platforms after publicly announcing their “AI-first” policy, which includes explicitly replacing some contractors and evaluating AI usage in remaining employees’ performance reviews.

While I’ve still yet to meet an AI tool that is remotely useful for me, I respect (some) individual experimentation with them, particularly rational people who share the pros and cons of their own actual experiences. (Pundits love hypotheticals and rarely have a specific example when pressed; many times, there’s an easier way for experienced professionals to do the thing they’re experimenting with using existing tools.) While most are simply chasing attention, some are genuinely taking one for the team as early testers. What I don’t respect and will always resist is being mandated to experiment with AI tools, especially when there’s no clear use case for them. It’s not a new approach to new technology, and blind adoption has never been a successful strategic approach, either.

If you don’t know exactly why you want someone to use a particular tool (or worse, don’t even have a specific tool and a use case for it in mind), and your employees don’t believe that tool can help them in any useful way, they shouldn’t waste their time on that experiment. More importantly, you shouldn’t want them to waste that time, either, because even the worst leader understands that time is money. (aka, opportunity costs)

__TWO

Perception Is Reality | David Gallaher

In the end, it’s not about rejecting technology. It’s about refusing to sacrifice people at its altar.

There’s a misleading belief that you’re either pro- or anti-AI, but Gallaher offers a great example of how companies could be approaching AI usage from a human-first perspective instead. Most aren’t, and it shows in their public and internal announcements, and we’ve already seen instances where it has predictably backfired through inferior products, services, and user experiences.

It can also hurt employee morale and engagement, but since so many companies are using AI as an excuse to lay people off anyway, some might see that as a fringe benefit.

Personally, I remain unconvinced by the vast majority of AI use cases in most industries, and believe the rush to adoption is a combination of banal FOMO and relentlessly unscrupulous PR. It feels “inevitable” because it’s being pushed everywhere — by default and often without any way to opt out — but that doesn’t mean YOU have to find ways to make it useful, nor entertain pundits or bosses who want to convince you otherwise.

___THREE

Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads | Julie Bort

“On the other hand, what are the things you’re buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you,” he explained.

____FOUR

Blue Shield of California shared the private health data of millions with Google for years | Zack Whittaker

Blue Shield said it used Google Analytics to track how its customers used its websites, but a misconfiguration had allowed for personal and health information to be collected as well, such as the search terms that patients used on its website to find healthcare providers.

The Internet is a hellscape, but as ridiculously stupid as this scenario ultimately is, it’s also a great example of how easy it is to do the wrong thing online, even if you have zero bad intentions.

This also seems particularly relevant to libraries, especially after last year’s debunked claim that OverDrive was sharing patron data, when it turned out to most likely be the library’s own website instead, via Google Analytics and/or Facebook tracking codes. Google Analytics is practically the default for measuring website traffic, and way too many libraries still rely on Facebook Pages and Groups to engage their patrons. Plus, libraries that allow patrons to read their OverDrive (Libby) ebooks on Kindles are also sharing personal data directly with Amazon.

We’re inching closer and closer to the laziest cyberpunk future imaginable.

_____FIVE

In ‘Sinners,’ the blues is a portal between this world and the next | Sheldon Pearce

God is present — he is simply out of reach. The juke is depicted as lively and liberatory, the church staid and constrictive. Though all the problems still follow them in, there is solace to be found at the barrelhouse, however briefly.

I’m still thinking about Sinners a week later, as it’s joined Get Out and Hereditary as one of my all-time favorite horror movies, with the added bonus of the whole musical angle that I’m still unpacking. I want to see it again, but I don’t think that’ll happen until the Blu-Ray comes out, which I absolutely will be buying whatever Special Edition they come up with on day one.

In the meantime, I’m collecting thought pieces and recommendations for additional reading, and Pearce’s take on the blues is one of the best I’ve found so far. While a spoiler warning is required, I daresay Sinners would still be effective even if you read the whole script in advance, because what Coogler put on the screen is so much greater than its individual parts.

______BONUS (SPOILER-ISH)

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