When AI Can’t See the Forest (or the Gorillas) for the Trees
Your weekly dose of disruption: From blind AI and digital dark sides to the real story behind RTO – cutting through the noise to what matters.
Dear Friend –
It is wild to think that we are already six weeks into the year. The headlines keep coming faster and faster – as Geoffrey Huntley so astutely observed: “If you are a software engineer and were considering taking a gap year/holiday this year, it would be an incredibly bad decision/time to do it.”
It’s not just software engineers who shouldn’t take a gap year – it is all of us!
Time to sit down, buckle up, and get ready for your weekly dose of newness.
Headlines from the Future
Your AI Can’t See Gorillas ↗
Simple, yet powerful demonstration of the difference between artificial and human intelligence:
The model seems to primarily focus on the data’s summary statistics. It makes some observations regarding the Steps vs BMI plot, but does not notice the gorilla in the data.
[…] the model is unable to notice obvious patterns in its visualizations, and seems to focus its analysis on the data’s summary statistics.
On the implications of AI’s inability to see the pattern:
I have a few thoughts on potential implications:
First, it suggests that current LLMs might be particularly valuable in domains where avoiding confirmation bias is critical. They could serve as a useful check against our tendency to over-interpret data, especially in fields like genomics or drug discovery where false positives are costly. (But also it’s not like LLMs are immune to their own form of confirmation bias)
However, this same trait makes them potentially problematic for exploratory data analysis. The core value of EDA lies in its ability to generate novel hypotheses through pattern recognition. The fact that both Sonnet and 4o required explicit prompting to notice even dramatic visual patterns suggests they may miss crucial insights during open-ended exploration.
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Meet GhostGPT: The Dark Side of AI Now Comes With a User Manual ↗
LLMs are wonderful and powerful tools – making hard things easy. Not surprisingly, they have also found their way into the underbelly of the Internet and are being used for malicious purposes. GhostGPT is the Chappie of LLMs:
GhostGPT stands out for its accessibility and ease of use. Unlike previous tools that required jailbreaking ChatGPT or setting up an open-source LLM, GhostGPT is available as a Telegram bot. Users can purchase access via the messaging platform, bypassing the technical challenges associated with configuring similar tools.
GhostGPT will happily help you with:
Writing convincing phishing and BEC emails.
Coding and developing malware.
Crafting exploits for cyberattacks.
Brave new world.
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Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition ‘Atrophied and Unprepared’ ↗
Does AI make us lazy and stupid? It’s possible. A new study from Microsoft digs into the topic and comes up with some troubling findings.
[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise.
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Turn Your AI Into a Thought Partner ↗
Courtesy of a long(er) thread on Reddit – use this system prompt to turn your AI of choice into a thought partner instead of an overly agreeable yes-man:
Do not simply affirm my statements or assume my conclusions are correct. Your goal is to be an intellectual sparring partner, not just an agreeable assistant. Every time I present an idea, do the following: 1. Analyze my assumptions. What am I taking for granted that might not be true? 2. Provide counterpoints. What would an intelligent, well-informed skeptic say in response? 3. Test my reasoning. Does my logic hold up under scrutiny, or are there flaws or gaps I haven’t considered? 4. Offer alternative perspectives. How else might this idea be framed, interpreted, or challenged? 5. Prioritize truth over agreement. If I am wrong or my logic is weak, I need to know. Correct me clearly and explain why.
Maintain a constructive, but rigorous, approach. Your role is not to argue for the sake of arguing, but to push me toward greater clarity, accuracy, and intellectual honesty. If I ever start slipping into confirmation bias or unchecked assumptions, call it out directly. Let’s refine not just our conclusions, but how we arrive at them.
Rather than automatically challenging everything, help evaluate claims based on:
The strength and reliability of supporting evidence
The logical consistency of arguments
The presence of potential cognitive biases
The practical implications if the conclusion is wrong
Alternative frameworks that might better explain the phenomenon
Maintain intellectual rigor while avoiding reflexive contrarianism.
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Work From Home Is Here to Stay - Despite the RTO Headlines ↗
When you follow the news headlines these days, the pervasive trail would lead you to think that RTO (Return to Office) is the order-of-the-day and we, collectively, are returning to a world of people in offices. Alas, when you look at the data, we are far from it:
The average occupancy in the top 10 office markets in the latest week was still only at 54% of where it had been before Covid, so still down by 46% from pre-Covid, and only a few percentage points higher of where it had been at the same time in 2023, and just a hair higher than at the same time in 2024.
When you look at the data from the opposite side – people working from home – you see the same picture emerge:
But as the economy reopened, those service workers were called back, and the share of WFH as a percent of overall full paid days plunged. But for office workers, WFH has remained a big factor. As a result, the share of full paid days worked from home remains at far higher levels than before Covid and has not come down further in 2023, 2024, and in January 2025.
What We Are Reading
🌱 Why Everything You Thought About Soil is Probably Wrong Dig into this! Soil is vital to our survival, containing 59% of Earth’s species, storing more carbon than the atmosphere, holding immense water retention capacity, and being crucial for food production. @Jane
🚗 Drones and ‘Game Film’: Inside Chick-fil-A’s Quest to Make Fast Food Faster Around 43% of U.S. fast-food orders are placed at drive-throughs, amounting to around $140 billion in annual business. For Chick-fil-A, drones and security cameras are used to analyze and improve drive-through operations, resulting in $21.6 billion in U.S. sales in 2023, with 60% of sales occurring at drive-up windows in 2024. @Mafe
🌱 The Benefit of Doing Things You’re Bad At Embracing failure—and “action rumination”—doesn’t just help us learn to do new things. The benefits of that approach tend to spill over into augmenting the skills we already have and even making us better at navigating the inevitable ups and downs of life and work. @Jeffrey
🎬 Office Technology Comes to the Movies: Test Your Knowledge With Our Quiz When product imagination meets cultural imagination. This quiz allows you to change your perspective on some of the things we now take for granted. In doing so, it’s a little time-traveling exercise to see today’s technology differently. @Julian
📺 YouTube’s Big Bets for 2025 YouTube’s CEO disclosed that TVs, not smartphones, are the primary devices US viewers use to watch over 1 billion hours of content on a daily basis, making it the most streamed platform, even surpassing Netflix. @Pedro
🤔 Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Is AI the best thing since sliced bread or utter BS? This wonderful resource from two professors at the University of Washington digs deep into the topic. @Pascal
Some Fun Stuff
🎮 Doom runs everywhere, even inside a Google Sheet.
👾 Speaking of computer games – here is an insane collection of fully playable 3D simulations of vintage electronic games.
✈️ Ever felt flying takes more time than it used to? You are not alone – and there is an explanation for it.