About The Coin Flip
The Coin Flip is my newsletter about AI, the culture growing around it, and what it all means for the way we live, work and treat each other.
Sometimes the way into that will be a ridiculous AI meme. For no other reason than humans need comic relief in between the heavy stuff. Plus, to be honest even the funniest memes hit differently these days. You absentmindedly can laugh mid-doom scroll at an AI meme about art, forward it to a mate then realize they’re studying to become a graphic designer.
Is the AI about to take their job? Or is someone using AI better than the rest about to absorb half the department? Is that someone going to be your friend? If you don’t think so maybe share this newsletter with them. It could turn out to be very useful!
I don’t think things are black and white when it comes to the potential of AI. I also do not think it’s worth the energy trying to ‘stop AI.’ The genie is out of the bottle whether you like it or not. That genie can revolutionize pretty much every industry on the planet. There is zero chance any sort of regulation can stop AI development altogether. I also don’t believe it would help humanity one bit.
We’ve had AI tools for decades. It just wasn’t as ‘in your face’ as a chatbot, instead it ran the NPCs in your computer games, parts of the software powering your utilities, or the social media and streaming sites you use for entertainment.
Everyone was fine with AI until it started talking back. When it was silently doing stuff in the background no one cared about the jobs it had taken. Automation has been a thing for a long time now. Factory workers have been displaced all over the world. Yet, now, blue collar jobs are under threat and those working in those roles have a much larger voice.
That’s the sort of thing I want to explore. How something entertaining becomes an uncomfortable question about the value of someone’s work. How a new capability changes who holds power. Whether the abundance we’re being promised will reach the people who need it.
We’ll get into ethics, economics, geopolitics, climate and technology. Pop culture gives us somewhere familiar to start. Sometimes a celebrity deepfake can make an abstract debate about consent feel very concrete.
I should probably make my position clear: I’m very pro-AI.
If this technology can help us solve hunger, poverty and climate change, and build a world where more people have the freedom to do something meaningful with their lives, I want us to pursue it.
Even if the odds were a coin flip, I’d take that chance. I don’t look at the world we already have and see a safe bet for humanity thriving.
That’s where the name comes from.
But wanting that future means caring about how we get there. Who owns the technology? Who benefits from the productivity? What happens to people whose livelihoods change faster than they can adapt? What would make me reconsider something I currently believe?
I’ve been experimenting with generative AI since GPT-3 and the early OpenAI Playground days. Since 2021, I’ve used some form of AI (then from late 2022 specifically LLMs) daily, personally and professionally, including for coding. That experience informs my optimism. It also gives me plenty to question.
Social media will come under scrutiny here, too. I’m interested in how communities shape what we feel comfortable saying about AI, which concerns get amplified, and which become inconvenient to acknowledge. I want to examine my own assumptions with the same curiosity I bring to everyone else’s.
Expect a point of view, room to change my mind, and some dark humour when the situation deserves it. There’s plenty of absurdity to enjoy while we work through the serious stuff.
My aim is to help you ask better questions about AI and work out where you can make a difference.
The ethos is fairly simple:
Enjoy the humour in the absurd and the mundane. Ignore the things you can’t change. Focus on how you can make the world a better place.
Do you use AI to write this?
Yes, and I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't. AI helps me research, draft and edit. I lead all content just like when I'm working with a human team. I set the direction, the tone, the strategy, and the goal.
I then review everything and make the final editorial call. Fluent nonsense is still nonsense.
So, AI, yes. Slop, no. Everything is led and managed by me and all sources are included so you can check it yourself.
If I get something wrong, I'll correct the web version and explain what changed.