Tag Archives: future

‘Oh Canada, What Happened?’ ~ A Podcast for Americans

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Back in March 2025 I wrote a patriotic post, ‘I am a Canuck’, just before US tariffs were going to be implemented. In that post I said,

“Insults, like calling Canada the 51st state, do not hurt Canadians, they strengthen us. Bullying us with tariffs does not make us cower but stand up taller. Attacking us does not divide us but emboldens us. We don’t usually focus on nationalism because our identity is about celebrating our differences, but when attacked our resolve is unified. We will find other global neighbours who we will work with. We might not start a fight but we aren’t afraid to finish it.”

I think I spoke for a lot of Canadians when I shared that. And it is with great pleasure that I share another Canadian voice for whom I believe not only represents the Canadian political ethos better than I do, but who also backs up his thinking and ideas with considerable research.

Darcy McNeil’s Substack is one that not only Canadians but also Americans should read… and many have! His article, ‘A Canadian Letter to America’, shared a few days before the American mid-terms was read by hundreds of thousands of people over many platforms (despite being suppressed/shadow banned on Facebook, where he has a large audience).

I would encourage my American friends to listen to a great podcast episode on Current Affairs Unfiltered, where host Paige Fullman hosts Darcy to enlighten Americans on both the view of America from Canada, as well as share Canada’s path forward with hostile American leadership against its closest ally:

‘Oh Canada, What Happened? w/ Darcy McNeil’ ~ “Paige speaks with Canadian writer Darcy McNeil for an on-the-ground account of how threats from the United States have reshaped Canadian public opinion, politics, and national identity. They explore the rise of Canadian unity, the Alberta secession debate, trade disputes, and whether the rupture between the neighbors can be repaired.”

In Canada, we get a lot of American views shared on every platform we get our news and social media from… whether we want it or not. I do not believe this can be said for the majority of Americans. So again, to my American friends, take the time to listen to this podcast. Learn a little bit about why your Canadian ‘neighbours’ are so united and strong… and hopefully we can find a way to rebuild and strengthen our relationship with our southern ‘neighbors’ soon. It’s in both countries’ best interest!

AI doom rabbit hole

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As someone who had a father who saw the impending doom of civilization around every corner… and who was simultaneously brilliant and would still follow conspiracy theory after conspiracy… I have a hesitation around sounding alarms of doom. But I went down a rabbit hole of alarming videos yesterday that I can’t get out of my head.

There is a story that was exaggerated in the movie Oppenheimer, where they talk about the probability of the bomb igniting the atmosphere. The odds were ‘near zero’ and it was gallows humour, not a genuine concern.

But the rabbit hole I went down was of video clips of experts in the AI field putting the probability of human extinction at ranges from 5% to above 33%… and not in the next 20 to 50 years but rather in the next 2 to 5 years. To state the obvious, these odds are NOT ‘near zero’. I’m not even going to share any of the videos I found, you can find them yourself. Pick an AI leader or anyone who is an expert in AI governance or AI safety… Pick anyone whose opinion you value in those areas and research what they think about this, and you’ll easily find very concerning clips of them stating rather scary odds. These are not conspiracy junkies, they aren’t fear-mongering social media attention seekers, these are the foremost experts in their field sharing this.

I asked Chat GPT about the actual Fermi/Oppenheimer odds on the possibility of destroying the earth, and got this back:

“The odds discussed by the Manhattan Project scientists

  • J. Robert Oppenheimer: In the film, he tells General Leslie Groves that the chances of atmospheric ignition were “near zero.” However, this is a dramatized conversation, not a documented numerical estimate by Oppenheimer.

  • Enrico Fermi: Famously joked about betting on whether the Trinity test would ignite the atmosphere. One historical account gives his estimate as 1 in 1,000 (0.1%). He wasn’t seriously predicting catastrophe; it was gallows humour.

  • Hans Bethe and Emil Konopinski: They investigated the physics and concluded that a self-sustaining nuclear reaction in the atmosphere was effectively impossible.”

     

Then I asked, “Are we rolling the dice with AI super intelligence?” The following response does not quell my concerns. I’m going to share the last sentence first, “Perhaps the most important question facing our generation is whether we can develop the wisdom to govern a technology before we develop the power to lose control of it.” ~ All I see is a flat out race to get to super intelligence first, with no real thought of global governance. Even if global governance was a thing, there is absolutely no way to enforce it meaningfully. 

The deeper I went down the rabbit hole, the gloomier my outlook became. I’m left thinking about this clip from comedian Jimmy Carr which, while humorous, is literally telling us that we are headed towards humiliation by a all-knowing entity that ‘lives in the cloud’.

So I’ll leave you with this. What did Chat GPT say when I asked, “Are we rolling the dice with AI super intelligence?”

“Yes. In some important ways, we are. And I think the comparison with the Manhattan Project is one of the most useful ways to think about the risks of artificial superintelligence.

The uncomfortable parallel is this: in both cases, humanity developed a technology whose potential consequences exceeded our historical experience, while the people building it couldn’t confidently predict every outcome.

But there is an important difference. With nuclear weapons, the catastrophic scenario was a specific physical process: an uncontrolled chain reaction in the atmosphere. With superintelligent AI, the concern is much broader: creating something that could become more capable than humans at planning, persuading, scientific discovery, cyber operations, and eventually controlling critical systems.

Are we actually taking a risk?

Yes. There are several reasons to take the possibility of catastrophic AI seriously:

  1. We don’t fully understand what we’re building. Even the people developing advanced AI systems cannot completely explain or predict all their capabilities and behaviours.

  2. Capabilities may outpace safeguards. A system could become exceptionally good at pursuing objectives without reliably respecting the intentions or constraints of its creators.

  3. Competition encourages risk-taking. Companies and countries have incentives to develop increasingly powerful systems before their competitors do.

  4. Control becomes harder as capability increases. If an AI system can strategize, replicate tasks, manipulate people, or exploit computer systems better than its overseers, traditional safeguards may prove inadequate.

What odds do experts put on catastrophe?

One particularly revealing study was published in 2024.

Researchers surveyed 2,778 AI researchers who had published in leading AI conferences.

5%

Median estimate of human extinction or similarly permanent, catastrophic disempowerment from future AI.

16%

Mean estimate across respondents.

AI Impacts survey, based on researchers’ forecasts. These are subjective estimates, not measured probabilities.

In other words, the median researcher gave AI catastrophe odds of approximately 1 in 20.

That’s not a trivial risk.

The 2026 International AI Safety Report, led by Yoshua Bengio and informed by more than 100 experts, reinforces the concern. It finds that current AI systems do not yet have the capabilities required for loss of control, but that early warning signs exist. It also concludes that existing risk-management methods have significant limitations.

The most frightening parallel with the atomic bomb

I think there are three similarities:

  1. The race: Scientists and governments feel compelled to get there first.

  2. The uncertainty: Nobody can confidently predict what happens when the technology crosses a certain capability threshold.

  3. The irreversibility: Once a sufficiently powerful technology is released, it may be impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.

But there’s one crucial difference.

The atomic bomb required an enormous industrial infrastructure and was controlled by relatively few governments.

Advanced AI could potentially be copied, distributed, improved and deployed at extraordinary speed. Control could become much more complicated.

My view

I don’t think AI extinction is inevitable. Nor do I think we should assume that superintelligence will automatically become hostile.

But I believe there is a serious problem with the incentives driving development.

The benefits of building increasingly powerful AI are concentrated among companies and countries. The potential catastrophic costs could be shared by everyone on Earth.

That is a dangerous mismatch.

My central concern isn’t that AI will suddenly become evil. It’s that humanity might build something more intelligent than itself without first figuring out how to reliably keep it aligned with human interests.

And that brings me back to Oppenheimer.

After Trinity, he reportedly recalled the Bhagavad Gita:

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Perhaps the most important question facing our generation is whether we can develop the wisdom to govern a technology before we develop the power to lose control of it.”

 

AI as ‘Journey Thief’… Continued

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In yesterday’s post, ‘Journey Thief‘ I focused on artificial intelligence stealing the learning journey of students. In a comment, Karen Flello said,

“I used to ask students how they would know if they liked a subject (topic, activity) if they had never tried it. Then we talked about how “in the real world” we use things in ways we never expected. And maybe they are right – maybe they will not use a particular skill again. But if they never had exposure, they would not have the opportunity to find out what they would use (or like, or want to know more about). And I agree that AI can rob us of the learning in service of producing something that earns a grade. We have not earned it – we have not learned it – and that is the sad part. AI should be a tool to help us. But “help” means we, in fact, are doing something in the first place. And prompting some other thing / person to do something for us does nothing for developing imagination, skill, or resilience. We just get better at asking something / someone else to do it for us. A whole new kind of dependence.”

And I replied,

“Great to hear from you Karen,
That idea of lack of developing imagination, and also dependence on AI to do the work (and ultimately the thinking) is one of the biggest fears I have with AI. I’m simultaneously excited about AI taking humanity to new insights and new heights, while also deeply concerned about how much it can steal from our own learning journeys.”

This got me thinking about recent developments in Mathematics. In the past couple weeks AI has been solving a significant number of problems and conjectures that have stumped the best mathematical minds for entire lifetimes. This is incredibly destabilizing for the field.  Imagine being one of the foremost experts on a mathematical problem, having dedicated years of schooling and even more years afterwards to solving an seemingly unsolvable problem… Then having an answer dumped out of a computer along with answers to several more difficult problems that others in your field have also committed their lives to solving. You’ve moved from expert seeking answers to expert checking the work of an AI. You’ve moved from researcher and publisher to AI grader. You’ve watched your life work solved, not by someone smarter than you but by a machine that will only get smarter still.

Math is the first of these high knowledge fields to be ‘solved’ by AI, what’s next? It seems physics is not far behind.

These insights and solutions will do a lot to improve the understanding of these fields, but for how long? Does a current PHD student in Math who saw a future in solving one of these problems now continue on with their future plans? Does a newly graduated undergrad even decide to continue on with a Math PHD? Does a high school student find excitement in delving into Math when they know that they’ll never solve a problem that AI won’t beat them to?

What happens to these fields in 20 years when all the joy of discovery is stolen by AI? Who in 20 years is going to have the desire to enter this field? I asked Google who the top mathematicians are today and it came up with a list including Terence Tao, Sir Andrew Wiles, Grigori Perelman, Marina Viazovsk, Sir Martin Hairier, and Edward Witten. Who replaces them in a generation when all the problems they seek to solve are already solved by AI?

We already live in a world where only a handful of people really understand how computer chips are made and could help to rebuild the technology if all of the knowledge was lost today. Imagine how few that number will be in 20 years when robots are building AI designed chips to further improve AI. Imagine how many fewer will get into fields like Math and Physics, much less computer programming, when the most they can do is get a tertiary understanding of the field.

Is AI going to rob us of the next Einstein or Newton? Will anyone in 50 years understand the universe as much as the brightest humans today do? …When AI is doing all the work for us?

Like Karen said, “We have not earned it – we have not learned it – and that is the sad part. AI should be a tool to help us. But “help” means we, in fact, are doing something in the first place.”

What work will be left in these fields for humans to do?

___

 

Journey Thief

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One of the most frustrating things you can hear as a teacher is something along the line of, “Yeah, but when will I ever use this in real life?

I remember in my first year of teaching, in Math class I was teaching the Pythagorean theorem and at home we were having our countertops replaced in the kitchen. The guy doing the measurements for the job measured one side of the wall and marked it at 4 feet from the corner, then marked the other wall at 3 feet. Then he measured the hypotenuse to make sure it was 5 feet. I saw him doing this and asked why? He said that most corners are not exactly 90º and if they build the counter off-site at 90º then it won’t fit when they are installing it. 

I was so excited to share how this was being used ‘in the real world’, and I recall telling the story just to have a students say, “Yeah but I’m not going to be a carpenter, so it doesn’t matter to me.”  

The reality is that there are quite a few things that we do in school that we do not end up applying ‘in the real world’, but the process, the journey, of learning those skills is what is really valuable. You might never get into a formal debate or have to do a formal presentation to an audience after schooling, but it’s hard not to see the value of going through those experiences in school. School isn’t just about gaining specific skills, it’s also about learning how to question, how to learn, and how to find answers to things you don’t know. I wonder how AI is changing this? 

When a student is asked to write a formal essay with a thesis statement, three supporting paragraphs and a conclusion, they are not just learning about essay structure. They are learning to research, to find supporting arguments, to draw conclusions, and to share their thinking in a clear and concise way. They are also learning grammar, and even how to distinguish opinions from facts. When AI does this for them, what are they learning? What are they missing?

I think it is vital for educators to figure out what AI will do for students and why the use is appropriate for some tasks and not others. If they don’t, what they are essentially doing is letting AI rob students of their learning journey. It allows students to be journey and learning adjacent as opposed to be the main character in their own education. 

Without educators helping to direct AI use in school, what I see happening is that students can start to choose how much they participate as a student and how much they let AI be the student for them. I remember seeing a video of someone having a 3D printer print homework that ChatGPT did for them, in their own handwriting… And having just searched for it, it was shared in February of 2023, over three and a half years ago. So now more than ever, students are being given a choice: Do I do the work, or do I let AI do it for me? 

Another way to frame this is, ‘Should I go on a learning journey, or should I let AI do it for me?’

Is this something we want to leave up to students? Do we want participation as a student to be a choice? I think not. If it’s not going to be left to them, then ultimately it’s left up to the educators. And so if educators aren’t making the decision of who is going on the learning journey with them, they are allowing AI to be a journey thief, simply by not making the choice.

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Update: See AI as ‘Journey Thief’… Continued

Reaching, Retreating, or Revenue?

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I’ve been thinking about AI lately… not just the technology itself, but the motivations we bring to it.

Years ago, when the internet evolved into Web2.0, there was endless discussion about what it was becoming.

I remember watching the original ‘Did you know; Shift Happens‘ video created by Karl Fisch & Scott McLeod and thinking ‘Wow, the world has changed!’

I jumped in excited to explore the possibilities.

Looking back now, it seems that most of what we did and still do online falls into three broad categories: reaching, retreating, or revenue. And now that AI is becoming woven into our everyday lives, I’m wondering if the same idea applies?

Reaching is probably the reason I first fell in love with the web.

The internet allowed me to connect with educators, thinkers, and creators from around the world. It gave me an audience for my writing and a window into the ideas of others. Blogging, social media, online communities… at their best, they are about sharing, connecting, and finding people who help us think in new ways.

AI can support this kind of reaching too. I don’t see AI as something that only replaces sharing, thinking, and human creativity. I see it as a creative partner. Sometimes it pushes back. Sometimes it helps uncover connections I hadn’t noticed. Sometimes it simply helps me get unstuck… but always the potential to help me find connections and learn.

Used this way, AI becomes another tool for extending conversations and exploring ideas.

But not everyone comes online to reach.

Some come to retreat.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with retreating. We all need downtime. We need entertainment, games, stories, videos, and distractions. Sometimes we need a break from the demands of the real world.

The challenge comes when retreating becomes hiding.

The internet can make it easy to spend hours consuming without creating… doom scrolling without reflecting… escaping without returning. AI may amplify that temptation. Why wrestle with a problem if an AI can answer it? Why create something imperfect with disagreeing humans if a machine can generate something polished, and I can tweak it exactly how I want it?

The risk isn’t that AI will think for us. The risk is that we’ll retreat and only engage with AI, and engage less and less with other people and the world around us.

Then there is revenue.

Much of the web runs on it. Much of AI is being built around it. Businesses want efficiency. Creators want audiences. Entrepreneurs want opportunities. None of that is surprising.

What fascinates me is how quickly conversations about any new technology seem to drift toward monetization. A new social platform appears… people ask how to make money from it? AI emerges… people ask how to automate work, build products, or generate income?

Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. But revenue is most powerful when it follows value rather than replacing it as the end goal.

The people who have influenced me most online are not focused on revenue. They are reaching. They are sharing ideas, contributing to conversations, and creating things they care about. Revenue may follow, but it isn’t the reason they started.

So when you decide to use AI, here is a question to ponder:

Am I using this technology to reach, to retreat, or to generate revenue?

The answer will probably be all three at different times. The more important question is which one is driving the others? For me, I hope that reaching always comes first, because the best part of the internet has never been the technology… It has been the people I’ve learned from, connected to, and who have enriched my life. Perhaps one day AI can be added to that group, but for now, it’s still people.

 

A country divided

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Two different people shared this with me today.

These stats are very telling, and what they tell me is that the US is a very polarized and divided nation.

It runs deeper than party politics. It runs deeper than any of the categories that are measured in the stats shared in the video. They are, individually, mildly interesting and perhaps you could even say expected. But the collection seen together says a lot.

I wonder what it would take to make the US less politically polarized? I wonder if there is a voice for the centrist, for the center? It seems to me that people cannot take a centrist view without alienating people on both sides of the political spectrum… and I find that sad.

There only seems to be space for voices on the edges, voices that focus on attacking the opposition. Argument over discourse. Debate rather than discussion. Ad hominem attacks instead of reasoned responses.

Is civil unrest the next step? A 3-party system? Martial law? Or can a peaceful way forward be found? I’d like to think a peaceful approach is possible, I just don’t see it when the country is so divided.

Consciousness and AI – REVISITED

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In my post, Consciousness and AI, I postulated that consciousness evolves only after organisms have idle time:

“I have a theory about consciousness being on a spectrum. That itself isn’t anything new but I think the factors that play into consciousness are: Basic needs, computational ‘processing’, and idleness. Consciousness comes from having more processing time than needed to meet basic needs, along with the inability for processing (early thinking) to be idle, and so for lack of a better word desires are created.

Think of a very simple organism when all of its needs are met. This isn’t a real thought process I’m going to share but rather a meta look at this simple organism: “I have enough heat, light, and food, what should I do with myself?”

  • Seek better food
  • Move closer to the heat or light source
  • Try different food
  • Join another organism that can help me
  • Find efficiencies
  • Find easier ways to move
  • Hunt

At first, these are not conscious decisions, they are only a choice of simple processes. But eventually, the desires grow. Think decisions that start like, “If I store more energy I can survive longer in times of famine.” And evolve to more of a desire not just for survival but for pleasure (for lack of a better word): “I like this food more than other kinds and want more of it.” …All stemming from having idle processing/thinking time.”

Well, now Google is giving AI some idle time. They are calling it dream time, but it’s essentially time for metacognition… thinking about what it has learned. See this TikTok by @parthknowsai:

Later on in my post I say,

“Our brains are answer-making machines. We ask a question and it answers, whether we want it to or not. If I say what does a purple elephant with yellow polkadots look like? You will inevitably think of what that looks like simply from reading the question. I think that is what happens at a very fundamental level of consciousness. When all needs are met the processors in the brain don’t suddenly stop and sit idle. Instead, the questions arise, “How do I get more food?”, “Where would be better for me to move to?” Eventually all needs are met, but the questions keep coming. At first based on simple desires, but more and more complex over generations and eons of time.

So why did I title this, ‘Consciousness and AI’? I think one of the missing ingredients in developing Artificial General (or Super) intelligence is that we are just giving AI’s tasks to complete and process at faster and faster times, and when the processing of these tasks are completed, the AI sits idle. An AI has no built in desire that an organic organism has to use that idle time to ask questions, to want something beyond completing the ‘basic needs’ tasks it is asked to do.

If we figure out a way to make AI curious, to have it desire to learn more, and to not let itself be idle, at that point it will be a very short path to AI being a lot smarter than us.”

And I  conclude:

“If it’s idle time and desires that bring about sentience, then figuring out how to make AI’s naturally curious will be the path to artificial general intelligence… Because they are already at a place where they have unused processing time, which is continuing to grow exponentially fast.”

If my prediction is correct, this sleep/dreaming/processing/distilling, (ultimately ‘free questioning’), time is going to accelerate the true intelligence of AI. And so we are going to see at the very least general, if not super intelligent, artificial intelligence much sooner than might be expected or predicted.

Death of the App?

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When AI allows anyone and everyone to create an APP for your phone when will people start to realize that no one wants 8 pages of apps? Do I need an app that is just an interval timer for working out, or will a website do? Do I really need a meditation app or just a playlist? What about (another) podcast, AI, appointment, parking, or fitness app?

Can I just read an article or input my data on a web page designed to work well on a phone, rather than being asked to open an app that I haven’t used in a month, and then having to log into that app before I can use it? Do I have to be asked… every… single… time… if I want to continue on a website or move to the app? Why is the download process necessary? I understand the challenge of not having data, but if I’m using a parking or appointment app, they are going to need data anyway, so the app is just an extra step, not an efficiency.

I think we are going to start to see some very clever websites evolving. At first the app will still be available, but it won’t actually be an app, it will be like a dedicated web browser opening a specific website. So, you’ll still get the icon on your phone if you want it, maybe because it’s easy to find that way, but pretty soon the only apps you’ll want on your phone are ones like banking and email, where security is important. Other than that, I predict a complete shift away from phone apps in the next 5 years… that is, if we are even interested in still carrying a phone with us in 5 years, but that’s a whole other thing to think about.

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Related: Breaking the Fourth Wall (Vibe Coding)

Breaking the Fourth Wall (Vibe Coding)

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There’s a moment in theatre when the actors stop pretending the audience isn’t there. They turn, they look, they speak through the invisible barrier that’s supposed to keep the story contained.

That barrier, the fourth wall, is an agreed upon fiction. A fragile membrane that says, “Let’s pretend this world is whole and sealed, and you’re only here to watch.”

But the instant it’s broken something electric happens. The audience is no longer observing… they’re participating. The story stops being a distant thing and becomes a conversation. A wink. A confession. A reminder that the boundary was imaginary all along.

I’ve always thought the fourth wall is less a wall and more a veil. Thin. Permeable. A curtain we agree not to touch… until someone does, and suddenly we’re aware of the invisible wall we were happily ignoring. It was never there other than by our agreement to put it there. Think of all the times you sat at a table with play actors or television stars… the table set on 3 sides so that we can be seated at the table with the other guests. 

It’s funny how much of life works this way. We build invisible structures around our routines, our roles, our expectations. We pretend they’re solid. Then something breaks the wall… retirement, travel, a conversation, a moment of honesty. And we realize the boundary was never real… Just agreed upon.

~~~

And then there’s AI and vibe coding.

Vibe coding breaks a different kind of fourth wall. Traditional coding puts a strict boundary between intent and implementation. Computer programmers take an idea someone has, translates it into a foreign language, then they run the program, test and tweak it, and put it out into the world. 

Vibe coding says: What if we eliminate the computer programmer? What if the boundary between human intention and machine execution is thin enough to poke through? What if we can talk to the system the way an actor talks to the audience… directly, without pretending the separation is there?

In theatre, breaking the fourth wall collapses the distance between story and spectator. In vibe coding, breaking the ‘programming wall’ collapses the distance between idea and implementation.

Both moments feel like cheating. Both feel like magic. Both reveal that the barriers we created are no longer needed. The fourth wall says, “You’re not supposed to be part of this.” Vibe coding says, “You can be.”

Theatre uses the break to deepen connection. Vibe coding uses it to accelerate creation. And in both cases, once you’ve experienced the break, it’s hard to go back to pretending the wall was ever real.

We are all really just actors on a world stage, now given the chance to break the fourth wall: the programming wall; the creativity wall.  We can choose to be an actor and participate in breaking this wall, or we can sit back like an audience member and watch others do it. 

Open software, open apps

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In 2 years, who is going to pay Adobe or Microsoft for a fleet of software tools that they can get for free? Who is going to pay an app subscription when we can ask a swarm of AI agents to build us our own personal app that meets more needs than a purchasable one?

Will Adobe and Microsoft be modern versions of Blockbuster video stores, losing out to another model of delivery? With the difference being that the Netflix replacement will be open sourced and free.

Now, any and all software can easily be reversed engineered and cleverly replicated without infringement on Copyright Laws. This fundamentally undermines software/app by subscription companies.

And I’ll emphasize that this is happening now! This is a massive disruption to the status quo. Large, successful companies will see profits plummet. Companies relying on subscriptions for software will lose a significant number of end users and subscribers.

What happens to our world when open software and open apps take over? We are about to find out!

See: Someone Just Rebuilt Adobe for Free, and Claude Can Run Them All (7 apps tested) – Jay E | RoboNuggets