Poker Face Recognition

Happy Monday – and welcome to your weekly antidote to brainrot: a hand-picked batch of videos, articles, and memes to help you make sense of the moment.

Sensemaking around AI is like chasing a mirage.

The landscape is changing fast. Signals are everywhere. Capabilities evolve daily. Even those working deep in the field feel they’re falling behind. Tracking what AI can do has become a full-time job — and there’s no sign of a slowdown. Instead, we’re likely headed for a fast takeoff toward superintelligence within a few years.

In 2019, I interviewed 100 people about their relationship to technology. The first question I asked: Does it feel like the world is speeding up?

80% said yes. 10% said no. 10% weren’t sure.

This was before AI took center stage.

Today, the sensation of accelerating time is even more acute. Some, like Terence McKenna, described it as fractal time — but even poetic metaphors fall short of explaining the collective experience.

To me, it feels like a collapse of boundaries.

AI is a snapshot of our collective unconscious. A probability wave collapsing into meaning. A reflection of our biases, hopes, and defaults — pointing us toward brilliance, or mediocrity.

Every AI output is a portal into latent space — a remix of all that could be. That’s why it excels at style transfer: surface without substance, essence abstracted from form. It mirrors us, even when we can’t recognize the reflection.

Until next week,
MZ

PS. Thanks Akemi 🤍 for this week’s post-apocalyptic imagery.

---

---

NotebookLM podcast about our AI community (10 min)

NotebookLM makes everything sound interesting, but this podcast that Chris Rimmer created by dropping our WhatsApp chat log is so much fun. Thanks to everyone in the group for making it such an awesome place. I only wish they stuck to the landing in the episodes - which usually end abruptly.

---

Italian Brain Rot (NYT)

One of my favorite unexpected outcomes of AI generated imagery is Italian (Unlocked NYT link). Ballerina Cappuccina and other slop-like characters are taking over TikTok with unhinged energy. I’m unabashedly loving it.

---

Creating agents that co-create (25 min)

Excellent technical talk by Karina Nguyen about agents and types of machine learning.

---

Prompting for Originality (1h)

Excellent podcast interview about designing products around AI.

(via Richard Wolfe)

---

Tristan Harris' new TED talk about the perils of AI (20 min)

TED link.

---

Why everyone suddenly believes in AGI by 2027 (20 min)

I'm in this camp.

---

RAG in Prod (17 min)

I had no idea RAG was invented by a Dutch at Meta. Technical but very practical talk about delivering AI products at scale.

---

What happens when AI makes better AI? (15 min)

Highly recommended to understand the exponential mindset.

---

Quick Links

• The Leaderboard Illusion (Via Derek Lomas)

• Very neat little mini-apps from Google Labs that help with language learning. (Via Chris Rimmer)

• No love for Duolingo as they announce being an AI-first company (meaning reducing their contractors).

---