Weekly wrap #005 - Trees, AI granny, binge drinking, and performance isn't about you

This is a wrap-up of some things I’ve come across and some ponderings I’ve had over the last week.

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Something that moved me

“At first I didn’t even like the tree. It blocked my view.

It wasn’t a special or important tree. A deodar cedar, or Himalayan cedar, is a common tree in Portland and just about everywhere else. But it was big, which meant that it was old, which made it impressive.

It didn’t take long for me to understand that it wasn’t blocking my view. It was my view.

Its cones were white, and they stood straight up and glowed against the deep shadowy branches. The first time I saw those cones emerge, I thought the tree had been visited by a flock of white birds.

The best view of the tree was from my bedroom window. I would look out at it when I couldn’t sleep. That’s what I’ll miss it the most, waking up in the middle of the night and seeing it loom over the rooftops against a dark sky, and imagining that it is full of sleeping birds.”

There’s more of this beautiful writing in this “Requiem for a Tree” by

Amy Stewart

. Let me know if you do check it out.

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Something that intrigued me

This is an AI ‘granny’ messing with some call-centre scammers. It’s intriguing me because while it’s very amusing and kind of funny, it really got me thinking about use cases for AI I had never thought of before. To be honest, I’m not even sure exactly what the point of this is, other than wasting the scammer’s time and acting as a sort of reverse phishing scam in itself. But then doesn’t that mean these call centres (often in India and Bangladesh) could themselves be replaced by AI agents.

So what does that mean, exactly? Are we heading towards a future where an obnoxious AI agent who has a 93% grasp of English and a 2% grasp of human decency calls an AI granny and they see who can steal who’s bitcoin first?