Month: August 2026

Inadvertent Time Travel

Uh oh.

A week ago I knocked my phone – a Google Pixel 8 Pro – off the table and watched helplessly as it bounced awkwardly onto the stone floor of our favorite restaurant. After retrieving it I noticed a splotch of dead pixels in the top right corner. This was a new phenomenon – I was expecting a cracked screen. But the display sported what looked like a deep bruise. Over the next few days, the black spot spread slowly toward the phone’s front facing camera. By midweek, the Pixel’s light sensor was enthusiastically involved, and my phone was rendered unusable.

I live on an island, so a quick repair or replacement is not an option. That’s why I keep my old phones in stock – it can take up to three weeks for a FedEx or UPS shipment to find its way to my home. I ordered up a replacement online (I settled on the Pixel 10, as the new 11 is on backorder for more than a month), fired up an old Pixel 6, and popped in my SIM.

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The Essential Question: Can We Control AI?

(260717) — SHANGHAI, July 17, 2026 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai, east China, July 17, 2026. (Xinhua/Shen Hong) (Photo by Shen Hong / Xinhua via AFP)

August is often dismissed as a lost month in the business world – nothing gets done because everyone is on vacation. But where I live, August is the apex of the year. A heady mix of artists, financiers, philanthropists, business leaders and politicians converge on our little island for the month. The ensuing deluge of lecture series, film screenings, impromptu house concerts, and remarkable dinner conversations can be overwhelming. Four weeks into the month, those of us who live here are a bit strung out, ready for the tide of intellectual and cultural offerings to recede. Fall becomes a time to repair.

As might be expected, one topic dominated the conversations I’ve had at countless dinners, soirees, and fundraisers this summer. Yes, it’s “AI,” but that was true last summer, and even the summer of 2024. This year, however, the discussions turned from wonder and anticipation to something…darker. A central question came up over and over again: Is this technology – and the leadership behind it – fundamentally out of our control?

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Data. Is. Not. Oil. Can It Be A Public Good?

The Economist, August 2017

“Data is the new oil.”

It’s the metaphor that won’t die, though for the next little bit, I’ll do my part to advance its expiration date. Yesterday came news that Google purchased the entire data corpus of Spirit Airlines, which is selling its assets in a bankruptcy process. Google isn’t planning on launching an airline – instead, it believes Sprit’s data will help train more capable AI models. Cementing the role AI plays in reviving the “data is oil” narrative, Google won the auction over Mercor, a firm that pays contractors to train AI systems.

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What’s Next?

Artwork Rick Griffin

I’ve been trying to connect with a journalist who reached out a few days ago. He’s working on a story from way back in my career – the early days of Wired, circa 1995. It’s taken a few attempts to find a time. Despite the fact I’m no longer running a company full time, my days are still packed with meetings and obligations and new priorities. It probably doesn’t help that I keep my phone silenced, so I miss serendipitous calls, a favorite tactic of good journalists. But between various board meetings, community work, time blocked for writing, client and advisory work, investment reviews, exercise, and friends and family, squeezing in a 15-minute call feels just as hard now as it did when I had an EA, a Chief of Staff, and two full-time jobs*.

Is it strange that while I’m not “working” nearly as much as I used to, I still feel just as busy? Is that a good thing, or a problem?

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AI Is Just (Currently Bad) Software

An image from SasSpocalypse.com

Last week I ran into an old pal at a party who asked me what I thought of the “SaaSpocalypse” – the AI-driven correction that hit nearly all software stocks over the past few quarters.  My friend has bought and sold software companies for most of his career and is a sophisticated player in private equity markets. Like everyone in finance and tech, he reads just about everything he can about AI’s impact on our economy, and in particular on formerly predictable sectors like software. “Software companies are cheap right now,” he said, before adding that he wasn’t sure it made sense to buy them, because everything he was reading was saying the software party is over.

It might have been the cocktails talking, but before I had a chance to think, I said “AI is just bad software. It’ll get better, once companies figure out what to actually do with it.”

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The Data Center Debate Rages. Will It Change the Course of History?

A NYT story on data centers.

Even though I ran a political media company for four years, I’ve largely avoided writing about politics, and I’m not about to make a habit of it now. But the politics around data centers has come to dominate coverage of AI, and how those politics play out over the next few months will likely determine not only the course of Trump’s final two years in office, but who inherits the Presidency in 2028.

Until we can see the monster, we tend to ignore the monster. With their massive appetites for energy, land, capital, and water, data centers have become tangible manifestations of Big Tech’s otherwise incorporeal impact on society. Data centers give the monster a body, a tractable container through which to air out a dog’s breakfast of grievances against not only the tech industry, but also the corporations, politicians, and financiers profiting from its concentrated power.

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