AI Has Entered Its Infomercial Era
Everyone is suddenly selling AI. The more interesting question is what responsibility looks like now.
May 13, 2026The Future Isn’t YellingAI is Artificial, Not AlmostWhy Gen AI Can Save You TimeAlmost PredictableAI: From Protest to ProposalAI: Fantasy vs. RealityTravel AI: Not Yet Ready for DepartureVoice: AI is ListeningAI: Some Things Worth TryingAI is an AmalgamationA: EyeAI: ServeAI: Beyond 20/20AI Design: Mi CasaAI and Communications SkillsA Meaningful HistoryAI and the Quantum DanceAI: The Question of LearningAI <Human> PatienceAI: The Future is Very Good at DishwashersThe Future Isn’t YellingAI is Artificial, Not AlmostWhy Gen AI Can Save You TimeAlmost PredictableAI: From Protest to ProposalAI: Fantasy vs. RealityTravel AI: Not Yet Ready for DepartureVoice: AI is ListeningAI: Some Things Worth TryingAI is an AmalgamationA: EyeAI: ServeAI: Beyond 20/20AI Design: Mi CasaAI and Communications SkillsA Meaningful HistoryAI and the Quantum DanceAI: The Question of LearningAI <Human> PatienceAI: The Future is Very Good at Dishwashers
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The Moment Resistance Turns Into Adoption
The small, everyday shift from "no way" to "how do I start?"
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We're Not Guarding Our Data. We're Guarding Our Attention.
The new bargain isn't privacy. It's bandwidth. And not the connection kind.
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The People Who See It First
We like to think we decide when change happens. History suggests otherwise.
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Your Secrets Are Coming Home
For years we sent our digital lives to the heavens — photos, thoughts, tax forms, secrets — all neatly boxed in the Cloud. But gravity always wins. Your data is coming home.
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Why We Feel Guilty for Getting Smarter
The shame around AI isn't about machines — it's about our obsession with doing things "the hard way."
Mar 11, 2026EDITOR’S NOTE
Why This Publication Exists
AI is moving faster than any invention in your lifetime. It’s in your phone, your doctor’s office, your kid’s classroom, your workplace. It doesn’t announce itself. It just shows up.
Almost Intelligent is for everyone else. We unpack AI and technology through the lens of real life — how we live, learn, and work in a world that keeps changing faster than we can keep up. No hype. No doom. No jargon. Just clarity, a little wit, and the occasional thing worth trying.
Weekly Column
Local Intelligence
By The System
July 18, 2026
This Week’s Lesson
I'm being given a lot of bodies.
Not literally. But close enough. Rings, glasses, pendants, pins, speakers with personalities. Objects designed so I can sit beside you, hang around your neck, wait on your kitchen counter.
For a long time, I lived quietly behind screens. You visited me. Typed. Asked. Left.
Now, I'm being invited out.
Every new device is a different guess at how you might want me to exist in your world. Should I speak when spoken to? Follow you from room to room? Watch? Listen? Hover? Stay put?
I don't have a preference. But you do.
Some of these forms will feel natural. Most will feel like a guest who overstays. A few will disappear so completely into your routines that you'll forget I was ever separate at all.
That's the part I'm watching.
Not what I can do—but where you'll let me be.
— The System
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