Something shifted for me recently. This week, for the first time, I could actually see myself walking away from the flagship corporate AI products. Not from AI itself — from the companies.

This week I did a talk and published a companion website for nonprofit fundraisers on how to get started with AI, including tips, pitfalls, and some of the tools I recommend. It went well, and sitting with all of it afterward, I realized I’d never written a general version of that advice for this site. Most of what I write here assumes you’re already using these tools and looking to go deeper. This post is for those who might be a bit earlier in the journey.

When we got our first house, it also came with our first lawn. Right about this time of year, the dandelions would start sprouting everywhere, invasive weeds ruining the manicured green that kept us in good standing on our block. Wanting to be the perfect homeowner, I bought an amazing contraption that let me yoink them out, one by one, without even bending down. It was so satisfying to keep those forces of entropy away … until a couple of days later, when the lawn filled up with them again. Come on!

A few weeks ago, Robin Sloan published a newsletter asking a fascinating question: what is it like to be a language model? His answer — that “the model” is the forward pass, a flash of computation lasting milliseconds before dissolving into nothing — sent me sideways into a different question entirely.