Reflect

Reflect

The audacity of the European Commission is staggering in its use of power, and also in the short sightedness of its decisions. This week we are witness to the Commission telling Apple what to prioritize in its product development. interoperability apparently. And also depicting Apple as a gatekeeper due to the success of the iPhone.

If there was ever an example of why removing Government from economic and business decisions this is it.

I say this not because I support Apples detailed decisions about its products, although I mostly am OK with them, but because if Apple makes mistakes users will abandon it. There is no need for Governments to get involved. The market is a harsh judge already.

Here was part of the EU pronouncement:

Interoperability enables a deeper and more seamless integration of third-party products with Apple's ecosystem. Interoperability is therefore key to opening up new possibilities for third parties to develop innovative products and services on Apple's gatekeeper platforms. As a result, a wider choice of products will be available to consumers in Europe which are compatible with their Apple devices.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_816

What a contrast to Sam Altman's thinking in his interview with Ben Thompson's Stratechery. Asked to explain AGI he uses the historical analogy of the transistor. I have used the analogy of water in the past (it seeps everywhere) Altman sees AI "diffusing into everything."

My favorite historical analog is the transistor for what AGI is going to be like. There's going to be a lot of it, it's going to diffuse into everything, it's going to be cheap, it's an emerging property of physics and it on its own will not be a differentiator.

https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-openai-ceo-sam-altman-about-building-a-consumer-tech-company/

The EU wants to micro-manage and control but AI wants to seep or diffuse. It's hard not to want the latter.

Jaye Chen writes in the Guardian about why STEM graduates are being won over by the "right wing".

Today's progressives not only do not understand technology; worse, we have completely ceded technological power to the right.

The idea that tech is bad and needs controlling lives on the "left". The idea that tech is good and needs to be accelerated lives on the "right".

This is a pretty good example of why the labels of left and right are poor identifiers in 2025. Innovation and progress are intertwined with free speech. These are progressive ideas learned from the enlightenment. That the "left" rejects them says more about their ideology than it does about the merits of the ideas. The "left" is no longer progressive and needs to find its way back there.

Talking of which, tech achievements are everywhere this week. A new OpenAI O1-Pro model, Skyreels, another text to video breakthrough, a Chinese EV that charges in 5 minutes and Nvidia announcing next years products are 100x faster than this years.

Oh and one last thing. My app 'Reflect' for Teens needing Help is now in beta. If you have a teen who needs to talk privately about feelings and life challenges have them click this link on their iPhone.

It give access to OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropics Claude and DeepSeek as chat buddies.

Essays of the Week