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An update to my September 2018 post, The Impact of AI . Eight years later In September 2018 I wrote a short post asking three questions about AI and jobs. ChatGPT was still four years away, and self-driving cars were my main example. This is that post, revisited. I kept the three questions and graded my own answers. Then I added the two topics I only pointed at back then: universal basic income and the post-scarcity economy. Will AI only replace monotonous, repetitive work? 2018 me: No. It starts there and heads for more complex jobs. 2026 verdict: right, and I undersold it. The driving example aged well. By March 2026 Waymo was giving 500,000 paid driverless rides a week across 10 US cities, up from 50,000 in May 2024 ( TechCrunch ). What I got wrong is the order. I assumed physical, routine work would go first. AI went for writing, code, analysis and support instead, the desk work that looked safe in 2018. So far the damage is at the entry point. Stanford researchers usin...

For most of my career designing and running enterprise networks, the threat model had a predictable rhythm. A CVE dropped, an exploit proof-of-concept circulated, signatures were pushed to the firewalls, and we scheduled maintenance windows to patch. It was a game of cat and mouse, but both players were running on human time. Over the past year, that rhythm broke. The biggest shift in our security landscape isn't just external adversaries; it’s what happens when internal users, developers, and autonomous models start iterating at machine speed. From human cadence to machine loops When someone uses an AI assistant or a local LLM to solve a problem, they don't craft a single request and wait. They iterate. They paste switch configurations, terminal outputs, error traces, and API responses into a prompt loop, tweak the question five seconds later, and paste again. A script that used to take three days to research, draft, and test now lands in ten minutes. But so do the unint...

Part of my day job at Cisco was once Kinetic for Cities: orchestrating sensors, networks and data at the scale of a city. A house-scale version of it was my quiet dream. Illustrative mockup built for this post 🙂 From a Pi to a platform What started a year ago with a Raspberry Pi and a few sensors grew into a dedicated server, a plethora of sensors, smart displays, and a web of automations, workflows and API integrations holding it all together. Somewhere along the way I started building with Claude, and the pace changed completely. It stopped feeling like a tool Work I'd scoped in months landed in hours. Edge cases I hadn't even reached yet came back already handled. It worked straight against the codebase, pushed changes out to the panels, re-ran the tests, and emulated the scenarios I couldn't easily stage myself. It started feeling like a team: engineer, developer, tester, even an electrician on call at 1am when I finally had time to tinker. Knowing what I want...

Update, October 2026: I revisited this post eight years on, with new sections on universal basic income and the post-scarcity economy. Read The Impact of AI, Revisited (2018 → 2026) . Artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and other animals.                                                                                                                                                          -Wiki AI will only replace monotonous repetitive work?  AI will c...

  What is Net Neutrality ? Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.   - Wiki Where Does India Stand in Net Neutrality ? As of DEC 2014, There are no laws enforcing net neutrality in India. Typical Example of Net Neutrality Violation : AIRTEL:  Differential rates for VOIP calls like Skype over cellular data  "All Special Tariff Vouchers (STVs) for data services (through which customer can avail discounted rate) shall only be valid for internet browsing and will exclude VoIP. To avail VoIP services, customer would need to purchase a separate STV for VoIP." Source - Airtel Webpage AIRCEL:  Differential rates for Facebook and WhatsApp against the  base tariff of 10p/10KB "If you're new to Aircel, then you can...

Nokia C6 The new Nokia C6 is a full Touchscreen mobile phone with slider QWERTY keypad. With a 3.2-inch HD touchscreen display and a slide out four-row QWERTY keyboard, the new C6 brings the best of messaging together with instant access to your favourite contacts and communications.The Nokia C6 boasts a customizable home screen which will also play host to your favorite contacts, your latest emails and your friends’ Facebook updates. With Nokia Messaging on board, you have support for up to 10 email accounts from your favorite email hosts including Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and Ovi Mail. There’s a 5-Megapixel camera that should be capable of excellent snaps, aided by autofocus and an integrated flash, and there’s also an integrated radio. Wireless functionality comes in the form of Wi-Fi, letting you easily connect to home and office networks, and you’ll also find Bluetooth,3.5G and A-GPS. The latter lets you use the Nokia C6 as a satellite navigation device, with Ov...