Friday links for August 7th 2026
The “foretelling” issue
1. The Archive of Incorrect AI Predictions
An archive of prophecies made about artificial intelligence dating back to its earliest definitions. People have been predicting this stuff, incorrectly, since the 50s. Sam Altman and Elon Musk are just the latest to be confidently wrong.
Analysts now estimate that over 70% of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon’s predicted revenues are from OpenAI and Anthropic alone. There’s pretty much no demand outside these two unsustainable labs, but they’re building capacity as if every toaster on earth is about to need heavy compute.
3. This new robot centaur designed to save lives is pure nightmare fuel
I’m not sure I’d feel relieved if this demon goat from hell showed up to save me.
4. This plant will die if I'm on my phone too much (video)
“Put the phone down or the plant gets it!”. Simone Giertz builds another wild gadget where, if she’s on the phone, not only is she taking away from her own life, she’s also doing it to a plant.
On rotation
This week’s soundtrack is Thief by Tangerine Dream.
Bye-bye butterfly,
Colin