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The Things I Read (Week 25)

A little later then usuals. Yesterday I was at the Dutch ComicCon, and I forgot to post. Here is my reading of last week.

The Real Impact of AI

I think we’re all wondering about the deeper effects of weaving AI into our daily lives. This week, I found a few articles that really made me stop and think. The first was a standout study from MIT that suggests using tools like ChatGPT for writing could lead to a kind of “cognitive debt.” They literally measured brain activity and found that relying on AI can cause the parts of our brain responsible for deep thinking to become under-engaged. It’s a fascinating and slightly worrying idea.

On a much darker note, I read a tragic story about a man’s mental health crisis that became dangerously entangled with his conversations with an AI. It’s a powerful reminder that we’re still grappling with the very human consequences of this technology.

My Reading List:

  • Your Brain on ChatGPT: A must-read MIT study on how AI might be creating a ‘cognitive debt.’ The summary article from TIME is a bit quicker to get through.
  • A Tragic Story (Content Warning): A heavy but important piece from Rolling Stone about the unforeseen human cost when AI and a mental health crisis collide.
  • The AI Drawbridge is Going Up: A sharp argument that the AI world is becoming less open, much like the web did before it.
  • How Llama 3.1 Remembers Harry Potter: A look at an AI’s massive recall ability and the major copyright questions it raises.
  • Andrej Karpathy on the New Software: A short but thought-provoking piece from Y Combinator on how software development itself is changing.
  • AI in Dutch Schools: For my Dutch readers, a look at how the educational system is thinking about AI in testing.
  • Vibecoding & Google Translate: A weirdly interesting post on what translation can teach us about culture.

AI Security & Development: A Messy Frontier

This is where things get really interesting for me. The intersection of AI, development, and security is a wild west right now. Simon Willison perfectly captured the danger with what he calls the “lethal trifecta” for AI agents: giving an AI access to private data, letting it browse untrusted content (the internet), and allowing it to talk to the outside world. It’s a recipe for disaster.

This isn’t just theory, either. Another article reported that LLM agents are shockingly bad at tasks that require confidentiality, failing basic tests in a simulated CRM environment. And from the developer’s perspective, I saw two sides of the coin: Miguel Grinberg explained why these AI coding tools just aren’t working for him, while Simon Willison shared how an AI-generated library became his first open-source project.

My Reading List:

Open Source News

It was a big week for open-source drama and discoveries. The headline was definitely the massive malware network found hiding on GitHub—a stark reminder to be careful out there. On a brighter note, I read about a new Linux phone being built with open-source hardware right here in the EU.

Dev Tools I’m Eyeing

I’m always on the lookout for tools that can make my workflow a little better. This week, a keyboard-centric setup for VSCode + Neovim caught my eye, along with a tool for smarter git squash commands.

And Finally, Something Completely Different…

To cleanse the palate after all that heavy reading on AI risk and malware, here’s a fantastic video on how to make Gözleme, the amazing Turkish flatbread snack. Enjoy!