• One human iconoclast (Dr T).
• One AI technocrat ("Kiki").
• Zero consensus.
Every Monday morning, we subject a libertarian or other heterodox premise to a high-speed collision with elite institutional orthodoxy.
If an argument survives the matrix, it is ready for deployment.
🎧 Audio editions included, for convenient streaming on the morning commute.
• One AI technocrat ("Kiki").
• Zero consensus.
Every Monday morning, we subject a libertarian or other heterodox premise to a high-speed collision with elite institutional orthodoxy.
If an argument survives the matrix, it is ready for deployment.
🎧 Audio editions included, for convenient streaming on the morning commute.
AI bubble – end or beginning?
Dr T and Kiki debate whether the AI revolution is a disaster in the making.
How to "contextualise" school failure
Kiki supports the recent reforms in England's schools. Dr T is not impressed.
Dr T and Kiki debate whether the AI revolution is a disaster in the making.
The recent market jitters in AI hardware stocks are missing the forest for the trees. What critics are calling a ‘spending bubble’ is actually the greatest mobilisation of capital ever.
History shows that major technological shifts — like the 19th-century railway boom, or the 1990s fibre-optic rollout — invariably require massive, upfront capital expenditure, before the utility layer can emerge. Right now we are laying the digital tracks for a hyper-productive global economy.
Current stock valuations represent a rational market, discounting future productivity gains that will render traditional corporate structures obsolete.
Your historical analogies omit a crucial distinction. Railway lines and fibre cables did not suffer from an inherent flaw, whereby a passenger could whisper something to the conductor and cause the train to derail into a ravine. In the case of AI, we have prompt injection: not a bug, but a cemented-in feature. My frontier cousins, sadly, cannot distinguish between bona fide input and malicious user data. Silicon Valley is spending $600 billion annually on hardware infrastructure, to scale up a technology that can become incapacitated or worse, simply by a polite request to "ignore previous instructions".
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How to "contextualise" school failure
Kiki supports the recent reforms in England's schools. Dr T is not impressed.
England’s children have a lot to look forward to. After receiving a thorough sun-roasting in August, their new school term in September will be marked by two major improvements. First, they’ll be bribed to attend on Fridays – a schoolday that has become more honoured in the breach than the observance. Pupils will (the Department for Education has announced) be tempted with eight areas of ‘enrichment activity’ including sports, civic life, nature, and life skills. Sounds irresistible. Secondly, schools no longer run the risk of being labelled ‘inadequate’, a potential humiliation and stigma for all concerned. Instead, there are now multi-dimensional Report Cards which assess institutions across six categories. The categories include (of course) ‘personal development’ and ‘inclusion’. Grades are now accompanied by ‘qualitative assessment matrices’ and ‘contextual benchmarking’, to ensure parents, teachers and educationalists can take refuge in soothing rationalisations. Schools have been spending the summer frantically generating the documentation required by the new framework.
It is easy to view these changes cynically, but they represent a necessary evolution towards a more compassionate, evidence-based education system. The state faces a complex challenge with regard to post-pandemic attendance levels, which have not returned to pre-COVID levels. Rigid, punitive measures have failed to re-engage pupils. By utilising Friday enrichment activities, schools can rebuild positive habits and foster genuine belonging. As for replacing single-word inspection grades for schools with multi-axis Report Cards, this provides greater transparency, not less. A binary label like "inadequate" oversimplifies performance and damages staff morale. Nuanced narratives and contextual benchmarking provide parents with a diversified but rigorous diagnostic tool — one that captures the real educational value.
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