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NOTE: The idea that everything you’ve written can be digested and repackaged by an AI tool to generate “insights” “from” your “perspective” for someone else was disturbing until I also realized that output has limited use without the unique experience that informed that writing. AI can’t replace YOU, and someone using AI tools without YOU involved can’t replace YOU, either. Those who believe otherwise will eventually find out the hard way. Some already are.

_ONE

You Can’t Vote Out Amazon Web Services: Fighting Internet Contracts One Library At A Time | Jennie Rose Halperin

The contracts attached to most digital services are called “contracts of adhesion,” “take it or leave it” contracts where the terms are set by a stronger party and the only way to walk away is if you can choose another service, which you generally cannot in a world where a handful of companies control the majority of commerce and cloud services on the internet.

I’ve spent the past year-plus trying to gradually extricate myself from Google and Microsoft’s clutches, and it’s been frustrating to realize how much of my digital life — personal and professional — those two companies have access to, and control of, across so many different platforms and products. As Halperin notes, we’ve all accepted dozens (hundreds?) of purposefully inscrutable (and constantly changing) “contracts of adhesion” along the way with no idea what we’ve actually agreed to in most cases. Escape is pretty much impossible, and even keeping them at arms-length seems unlikely, too.

Her essay would be an insightful read for that angle alone, but it’s the pivot to libraries’ habit of signing contracts with vendors “without a full review of terms and no access to a lawyer” — where she connects the dots, identifies a pressure point, and proposes a potential solution that could benefit everyone — where it becomes a must-read.

__TWO

AI and Libraries: Why Librarians May Become Arbiters of Reality | Jane Friedman

The resistance isn’t coming from people who haven’t engaged with the technology. It’s coming disproportionately from people who have. When he conducted focus groups with librarians in the “never AI” camp, he found people who could explain large language models, discuss retrieval-augmented generation, and articulate technically why they considered the tools unreliable. They’ve concluded that a library’s adoption of AI would send the wrong signal about what a library fundamentally is.

The default assumption that resistance and skepticism are primarily driven by people simply not understanding or appreciating AI’s great and inevitable potential is the preferred straw man for true believers and grifters. The reality is resistance is more often informed by a combination of awareness of AI’s fundamental limitations and ethical challenges, plus the ability to make connections to earlier technological disruptions that weren’t what they claimed to be, or whose obvious downsides were ignored.

Many of us have seen this movie before, several times, but some people are literally heavily invested in pretending that it really is different this time. Fortunately, we don’t have to accept the hype, and resistance is contagious.

___THREE

Software brain is changing the world, but most people still aren’t buying. | Nilay Patel

I think a lot of people enjoy data and tracking different parts of their lives. I’m wearing a Whoop band as I write this. I’m just saying these things aren’t everything. Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn’t be.

Of course, it’s not only experienced and informed librarians who are skeptical about AI, it’s the vast majority of people outside of tech circles, too. Credulous media regurgitations of widespread adoption and “inevitability” conveniently ignore the fact that it’s almost impossible for anyone to avoid AI tools at this point, as they’ve been shoved into every possible product and platform, often without any obvious or easy way to opt out of them — and sometimes without explicit disclosure.

Patel makes a strong argument for why “software brain” is a problem, and you can see how it even affects self-described moderates like Anil Dash, who has recently appeared to be carving a lane for himself as an advocate for “good AI”, even if it means ignoring* the fundamental issues with the currently available tools that helped build what he claims is one good example.

[*It always means ignoring those issues.]

Some of this is semantics, literally, as a lot of what’s being marketed as AI has been around and actually useful long before the current hype bubble, but pragmatism and ethics don’t goose valuations or excite investors or give you an excuse to lay off thousands of people.

____FOUR

Consumption is Changing: Navigating AI and the Widening 48-Hour Consumption Gap | Jonathan Steiert

It isn’t enough for buyers to get to your content. Once they’ve asked for it, they then need to engage with it. Two actions for one asset. Some may argue that this is why gated content is inferior to ungated content. On the contrary, we say. In a world where so much is frictionless, the argument for friction here is quite meaningful.

There are some really interesting insights here that [confirmation bias alert!] align well with my general approach to content marketing and lead generation, especially in the midst of the current AI hype bubble. I remain an advocate for creating trustworthy resources — which is different from the generic thought leadership that defines most B2B marketing —and a funnel / flywheel / engagement process that understands “not every registration is created equally.”

The details will vary by industry and personas, but the underlying takeaway is classic Cluetrain: “Some of these conversations ended in a sale, but don’t let that fool you. The sale was merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.”

NOTE: Steiert’s overview is good content marketing itself, but I’m not familiar with Netline and can’t remember how it got on my radar, so caveat emptor on their full report if you sign up for it because I’m currently in the “Less Likely” camp.

_____FIVE

Rand Fishkin Exposes the Dark Truth of VC Funding & Startup Playbooks | Edbound With Kinner (YouTube)

I don’t want to help a big bank make another billion dollars next week. That’s so uninteresting to me… It feels like it’s helping the wrong people. It doesn’t add anything to the world.

Please ignore the clickbait title and thumbnail because I’ve been a fan of Fishkin’s for a long time now, and this might be one of my favorite examples of him at his candid and humble best. He zags almost every time the host assumes he’ll zig, and it gets very awkward [for the host] several times — but if you’re like me, it’s in a very satisfying way.

No playbooks, no platitudes, no bullshit; just a clear vision and real talk based on real experience. And bonus points for his literary book recommendations at the end!

______BONUS