Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem | Los Angeles Review of Books

“We Have Built a Giant Treadmill That We Can’t Get Off”: Sci-Fi Prophet Ted Chiang on How to Best Think About About AI

Amid an explosion of panic about artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, and runaway algos, the celebrated writer has entered the chat. FYI: A potential Terminator situation is the least of his concerns.

What are engineers for? - The Philosopher Developer

I was once out with a team of software engineers who were talking about a challenging project, and one of them said, "It's our job to say what's impossible."

The future belongs to those who can refute AI, not just generate with AI

Why verification, not prompting, could shape the next decade of engineering

The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us | Critical AI | Duke University Press

Jathan Sadowski is an associate professor in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of two books on technology and capitalism, Too Smart (2020) and The Mechanic and the Luddite (2025). He also cohosts the podcast This Machine Kills.

Resetting on engineering expectations in the age of AI

I’m accepting new sponsorships for The Modern Leader for 2026. If you’re interested (or you think your company may be interested), you can learn more here.

Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear

We asked a group of writers to consider the forces that have shaped our lives in 2017. Here, science fiction writer Ted Chiang looks at capitalism, Silicon Valley, and its fear of superintelligent AI.

Life With Machines | Substack

A cultural movement (and show) for people who want to live well with AI, not just endure it. Bringing clarity, critique, curiosity (and some comedy) to the AI discourse. A production by Baratunde. Click to read Life With Machines, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

Presentations — Benedict Evans

Every year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. New in May 2025, ‘AI eats the world’.

Engineering managers have a new job description

Why engineering managers are expected to be hands-on again and how AI tools are making it possible to stay technically sharp while still leading.

The Same Old Fantasies Behind AI and New Technology

A review of Adam Becker, “More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity” (Basic Books, 2025).

Long live the engineering manager

AI can automate status updates but the engineering manager’s real work of coaching, alignment, and translation is growing faster than AI can replace it.

Are We Really Engineers?

This is part one of the Crossover Project. Part two is here and part three is here. A conference talk based on this work is now available here. I sat in front of Mat, idly chatting about tech and cuisine. Before now, I had known him mostly for his cooking pictures on Twitter, the kind that made me envious of suburbanites and their 75,000 BTU woks. But now he was the test subject for my new project, to see if it was going to be fruitful or a waste of time.

Care at the Edge of Automation – Topos Institute

Technologies don’t just solve problems, they change us. We invent technologies, and they invent us in turn, shaping our lives and worlds. This is the phenomenon that Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, in Understanding Computers and Cognition (1986), called “ontological design.” It matters now more than ever—along with a second lesson they saw clearly. Technological research is always guided (and sometimes misguided) by deep ontological assumptions about, e.g., the nature of cognition, agency, and communication. If we are to create technologies that truly serve human flourishing and care, we must bring these hidden assumptions into the open and question them at their roots.

Developers, Reinvented – Thomas Dohmke

What started as fear of AI replacing developers is switching to pragmatically embracing the ambitious reality of AI and viewing it as a growth opportunity. As we build the tools of tomorrow, we can usher developers through this reinvention of their role in ways that are intuitive, delightful, and cater to developers’ curiosity, keeping them fulfilled and happy during the transition. That makes us optimistic. Realistically.