AI & Software

The skills that make a good technical writer and the skills that make a good prompt engineer are the same skills. One team's accidental discovery proves it.

The constant 'I'm sorry' from AI chatbots isn't humility or good manners. It's a product decision baked into training, and it has real costs.

Spotify didn't just add premium features. It steadily removed free ones — a playbook that's now standard across SaaS.

The uncomfortable reason AI labs keep poisoned data in their training sets isn't negligence. It's a deliberate tradeoff most people misunderstand.

Asking an AI to show its work doesn't just slow it down. It actively changes what answer it produces, and usually not for the better.

A/B testing has evolved from optimizing button colors to systematically reshaping how millions of people use software, without their knowledge or consent.

The hedging language in AI chatbots isn't a bug or timidity. It's a deliberate engineering decision with deep roots in how these systems actually work.

The degradation of AI model performance under heavy use is a structural problem, not a scaling one. Here's what's actually happening.

AI models update constantly, and your carefully tuned prompts don't get notified. Here's what actually breaks and why.

When a tech giant watches a rival clone its best feature and does nothing, that's not weakness. It's often a calculated move years in the making.

Bigger training sets sound like a free upgrade. They aren't. Here's what actually goes wrong when you throw more data at a model.

Software companies frame legacy support as customer kindness. It is also, quietly, one of the most effective tools for keeping competitors out.

The real reason your software keeps getting AI features you don't use has nothing to do with your needs. Here's who those features are actually built for.

Bigger training sets don't automatically produce better models. Here's what actually happens when you feed an AI more data than it can use well.

The AI features cluttering your software aren't failed products. They're doing exactly what they were designed to do, just not for you.

More data doesn't automatically mean better AI. The story of Google's medical imaging research shows why quality, focus, and task fit matter more than scale.

When ChatGPT says 'I think' or 'I believe,' that's not humility. It's a calculated product decision with legal, psychological, and technical roots.

The most powerful design choices in software aren't buttons or colors. They're the options users never see because they were already chosen for them.