Failure of Imagination (111)

A week late & a decade early.

Jul 07, 2025

Happy Monday and welcome back to your regular delivery of AI memes, links and commentary.

Had you asked me a few years ago how I’d be spending time with AI, software development wouldn’t have made the list. Yet today it’s my primary focus—not just coding, but helping others unlock their own sense of agency when it comes to telling machines what to do.

Last Friday in Amsterdam, I co-hosted a workshop with

Derek Lomas

at the Embassy of the Free Mind with 50 curious minds exploring the intersection of AI, creativity, and esotericism. Each participant brought a personal project, and we helped them build the mindset and toolkit to bring their visions to life. In just a few hours, we witnessed uncertainty dissolve into possibility.

Projects ranged from the occult to the practical—from designing spiritual travel guides to translating sound into cymatic visuals. For many, the mystery of software gave way to a new kind of literacy. With an infinitely patient sidekick at our fingertips, coding felt less like a foreign language and more like a native tongue.

Personally, I’ve found more creative agency than I ever imagined—and I saw the same spark light up in the room. What we call “vibe coding” now feels like a medium, and to my surprise, it resonates deeply with creatives.

We’ll be doing more of these. In person and online. Stay tuned.

Until next week,
MZ

Kevin Kelly is an international treasure (37 min)

Nobody quite articulates the big picture view of what technology "is" like KK.

Careless People (90 min)

Clickbaity title but this interview with Karen Hao (AI researcher turned journalist) is spectacular to understand how the large AI labs are run. Especially if you've read "Careless People" (which you absolutely should).

Spatial Intelligence (45 min)

Dr. Fei-Fei Li is a legend in AI.

AI doesn’t work the way you think it does (15 min)

15 minutes to reframe your perception of "real" machine intelligence. Highly recommended watch. Picbreeder flipped my understanding of AI on its head. Here is the full 2h interview.

Chollet on AGI (35 min)

Fantastic presentation about AGI.

ChatGPT is becoming a religion (42 min)

This is unnerving.

Did the Camera Ever Tell the Truth? (17 min)

in the beginning photography and film, the magic of it drew people in. then it connects to ai. it talks about the technologies but mostly the incentives behind it and the business model of it all.

(Shared by

Rodrigo Turra

in the community)

I have shared Nate Jones before and I guess it is ‘acquired listening taste’ which is why today I thought.. lets have two options for breakfast.. perhaps pick one.. both worthy and the first reflects on the earlier great presso by karpathy (autonomy slider 🤗)

Shared by Richard Wolfe