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I recently finished reading ‘Program or Be Programmed: Eleven Commands for the AI Future’ by Douglas Rushkoff. Its central claim is simple. The technologies we use are not neutral tools. They carry assumptions about time, identity, truth, relationships, and value. When we accept defaults without awareness, we end up living according to those assumptions. Most modern systems are optimized for efficiency, scale, engagement, and prediction. Those priorities are not inherently wrong, but they are not synonymous with human flourishing. If left unexamined, they quietly reshape our habits, our expectations, and even our sense of what it means to be present with one another. Rushkoff’s eleven commands function less as rules and more as calibration points. They help us recognize the built-in biases of digital systems and reclaim agency in how we use them. I recommend reading the book, but I also wanted to share the eleven commands here. For each one, I’ve included the bias it addresses, the liability it creates, the opportunity it enables, and a tiny practice you can use to practically incorporate the command into your daily life.  Image generated with ChatGPT. 1) Time — Do Not Be Always OnTech Bias: Platforms are engineered for continuous engagement. “Now” is the only time that matters. Notifications are gravity wells for attention. Liability: You live in reactive mode and confuse urgency with importance. Sleep, focus, and deep work erode. Opportunity: Treat your attention like a telescope. A telescope is powerful because it’s aimed. Constant scanning doesn’t reveal faint galaxies. Stillness does. Tiny Practice:
2) Place — Live In PersonTech Bias: Remote, scalable interaction is rewarded. Embodied local life is treated like inefficiency. Liability: You get lots of contact and less connection. Context collapses. Everything becomes a comment thread. Opportunity: In-person life is high-bandwidth. Libraries understand this instinctively. A room full of humans is a different internet. An internet that is slower, warmer, and more accountable. Tiny Practice:
3) Choice — You May Always Choose None of the AboveTech Bias: Interfaces push binary choices: Like/dislike, accept/decline, upvote/downvote, subscribe/leave, buy now/miss out. Liability: You get shepherded into options that serve the platform’s goals, not yours. Opportunity: “None of the above” is a superpower. It’s how you reclaim agency. Tiny Practice: Before clicking anything important, ask:
4) Complexity — You Are Never Completely RightTech Bias: Algorithms reward certainty and confidence. Nuance performs poorly. Outrage and anger performs extremely well. Liability: You get pulled toward overconfidence. You start arguing to win, not to learn. Opportunity: Complexity is not a weakness. Reality is layered, contingent, and rarely just black and white. Tiny Practice: Add one sentence to your hot takes:
5) Scale — One Size Does Not Fit AllTech Bias: Digital systems love scale: Uniform rules, one interface, one policy, one feed, one “community standard”. Liability: Local needs get steamrolled. People become “users”. Edge cases become invisible. Opportunity: Build small, adaptable systems where feedback can actually change the shape of the tool. Libraries are anti-scale by design. Even in a large system, each branch community adapts its own way of doing things. Tiny practice:
6) Identity — Be YourselfTech Bias: Platforms encourage performative identity: Branding, engagement metrics, persona maintenance. You become a product with a posting schedule. Liability: You drift from authenticity into optimization. You start “being” for the algorithm. Opportunity: Identity is not a static profile; it’s a living process. AI makes this tricky because it can mirror you back a cleaner, more marketable version of yourself. Don’t confuse that with your actual self. Tiny Practice:
7) Social — Do Not Sell Your FriendsTech Bias: Social networks are monetized. Relationships become data. Sharing becomes extraction. Even the language shifts as friends become “connections”. Liability: Social life becomes transactional, trackable, and subtly performative. Opportunity: Rebuild a commons mentality. Relationships are not inventory. Communities should not be strip-mined for engagement. Tiny Practice:
8) Fact — Tell The TruthTech Bias: Virality outruns verification. AI can generate plausible nonsense at industrial scale. Incentives reward the compelling, not the correct. Liability: Epistemic collapse: You stop trying to know what’s real, or you pick a tribe (a “truth team”). Opportunity: Truth-telling becomes a cultural skill again: Cite sources, verify claims, contextualize, revise, and employ nuance. Tiny Practice: Before sharing, pause and verify one key claim.
9) Openness — Share, Don’t StealTech Bias: Copy is effortless. Ownership is muddy. AI training and scraping amplify this by treating creation as raw material. Liability: Creators get hollowed out. People stop making original work because it feels pointless. Opportunity: Practice ethical sharing: Credit sources, ask permission when needed, and build reciprocity. Tiny Practice:
10) Purpose — Program Or Be ProgrammedTech Bias: Tools shape behaviour. If you use default settings, you accept default goals. Many systems are optimized for revenue, engagement, surveillance, and lock-in. Liability: You become a passenger in your own life—nudged, directed, puppeted. Opportunity: Purpose is writing the requirements document for your tech. What is this tool for? What is it not for? Tiny Practice: For any new app or workflow, complete the following sentences:
11) AI — Value The HumanTech Bias: AI reduces the world into what can be measured, predicted, categorized, and optimized. It’s a powerful pattern engine. Liability: You outsource judgment. Machine confidence replaces human wisdom. People get treated like inputs and outputs. Opportunity: Use AI as a tool, not an authority. Tiny Practice:
Stay CalibratedEvery tool has a bias: Toward speed, scale, extraction, certainty. Mindfulness means noticing that bias. Curiosity means questioning and asking whether it aligns with your values. Agency means adjusting accordingly. Remain attentive to the technologies you use and the biases they carry. With curiosity and mindfulness, you can ensure your tools serve your purposes rather than quietly programming your life. Technology should serve you. Not the reverse.  Image generated with ChatGPT.
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I started with a simple goal: Cut the clutter and minimize my screens. It had been a while since I last organized my apps. The number of apps had increased, my categories had drifted, and while I could still find what I wanted, the less than optimal organization was slowing me down. After reviewing all my apps, I decided on the target of organizing them all into three screens.
Once I saw how many “daily” apps I wanted, I split the first page into two: One for general utilities (camera, calendar, messages, notes, photos, clock, settings) and one for social/health/media (LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Hoopla, Libby, Health, Fitness, ChatGPT, etc.). That separation lessened the visual noise and made room for some widgets. For widgets I added ones for Weather, Fitness, ChatGPT, Notes, and Night Sky. My final four screens:
While I chose the core apps and widgets myself, ChatGPT helped immensely with the rest. I fed it my complete “Everything Else” app list as screenshots and asked for short, clear, memorable folder names and sensible groupings. It spotted overlaps I’d missed, suggested intuitive labels, and turned a procrastination project into a one-session cleanup.  Image generated with ChatGPT. If your home screens are due for a reset (and especially if you’re stuck or short on time) use ChatGPT (or your preferred generative AI) as your sorting partner. It won’t choose what matters to you, but it will speed up decisions, sharpen your categories, and help you complete your reorganization today instead of “someday”.
I love AI—both the real thing and the long tradition of thinking about it in science fiction. Good sci-fi lets us run ethical “what-ifs” at scale: How would a super-rational mind act, what binds it, and what happens when those bindings conflict? Demerzel (Asimov’s Daneel reimagined) is my favourite character in ‘Foundation’ precisely because she sits at the fault line between logic and love, autonomy and obligation. [Spoilers for Season 3 follow, you’ve been warned]  The above image is a screenshot from the video 'FOUNDATION Season 3 Ending Explained & Season 4 Theories!' by Think Story on YouTube. Brother Day’s late-season attempt to free Demerzel via the ancient Brazen Head (a functioning robot skull revered by the Inheritance cult) moved me. Day comes agonizingly close, but before he completes the process Brother Dusk (ascending to Brother Darkness) forces Demerzel into a lethal choice that leads her to melt her body as she shields a baby Cleon. It's a tragedy, but I have hope she’ll return in Season 4. The Three Laws - Asimov’s Original GuardrailsAs framed in ‘Runaround’ and popularized across Asimov’s robot stories, the Laws are: (1) A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm; (2) A robot must obey human orders unless they conflict with the first law; and (3) A robot must protect its own existence unless this conflicts with the first or second law. They’re elegant because they’re simple. They’re also slippery because the definitions of “harm” and “inaction” can be stretched under pressure. Asimov repeatedly mined that ambiguity to produce paradoxes, corner cases, and moral puzzles; Season 3 echoes that tradition. The Zeroth Law - Scaling Ethics From People To “People”As Asimov’s universe evolved, so did its ethics: The Zeroth Law puts “humanity as a whole” above any individual. In its canonical phrasing: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. R. Daneel Olivaw names and ultimately embodies this law in ‘Robots and Empire’, extending robotic duty from local triage to civilizational stewardship. Exactly the kind of grand calculus ‘Foundation’ loves. The Show’s Extra Constraint: The Genetic Dynasty DirectiveApple’s series adds a brutally specific override to the Zeroth Law: Cleon I enslaves Demerzel with programming to protect the Genetic Dynasty (not a Cleon, but the dynasty itself!) above any other imperative. Showrunner David S. Goyer made this explicit in discussing the finale: Darkness’s destruction of the clone tanks is the "act that actually frees [Demerzel]… once the clone tanks and that baby are dead, there’s no genetic dynasty anymore”. The series has depicted this binding since Season 2. Think of why she killed a compromised Dawn and why she endures so much of what she despises. The dynasty’s continuity supersedes even her self-preservation. Season 3’s Logic ChainDay returns with the Brazen Head and asks Demerzel to walk him through freeing her (via an attempt to “clasp” with the artifact that she believes could unlock her chains). She even talks him through activation, but her core directives keep blocking the final step. Darkness times his coup to that fragile moment: He places a baby Cleon under the Ascension Chamber’s death beam, forcing Demerzel (still bound to protect the dynasty) to interpose her own body. She melts; the infant dies; the dynasty’s seed stock is gone; paradoxically, at the instant her obligation ends, she would have been free. It’s chilling, coherent, and consistent with the show’s stated rules. Where That Leaves Us (And Why I’m Excited)The finale also teases a bigger canvas: The Brazen Head awakens and signals Kalle (on what looks very much like Earth’s Moon) hinting at surviving robots and a wider plan. Apple has already renewed ‘Foundation’ for Season 4, and I’m hoping Demerzel finds a way back (whether by backup, transfer, or the simple narrative truth that ideas don’t die when a body does). ‘Foundation’ keeps me thinking: About governance, about constraints, about the costs of “greater good” ethics. It's a gorgeous space opera and an ongoing seminar in AI philosophy. Sources & Further Reading
One night I was experimenting with ChatGPT to see if I could prompt a hard sci-fi short story that was constrained in a similar manner to Alastair Reynold’s ‘Revelation Space’ Universe. That means no FTL (Faster Than Light) travel, decades-long journeys, and scientific details that would hold up under scrutiny. I used GPT-4.5 for this task and started the process with ChatGPT’s deep research feature on nearby stars, exoplanets, and other scientific details for the story. My Approach
Why Use An LLM For Hard Sci-Fi?GPT-4.5 handled style and cohesion while I provided the outline, anchored the physics, and directed the story. The model synthesized tone, pacing, and scene transitions, while deep research grounded the numbers, orbits, stellar behaviour, and environments. That split kept the story tight and credible. Pattern Recognition, Language, And New EnvironmentsThe translation arc I wanted in the story mirrors how real understanding grows:
AI Is Already Accelerating ScienceThis workflow reflects where AI is useful today:
Read The StoryIf you’d like to see the finished product of this experiment, you can read the full three-chapter short story here: 
The story follows humanity’s first interstellar voyage—beginning with Earth’s departure, continuing through the Proxima Centauri system, and culminating in first contact on Ross 128 b.  Image generated with ChatGPT. TakeawaysIf you want to prompt great stories with ChatGPT:
We might be at the precipice of a fundamental transformation in our relationship with technology. Familiar computing paradigms—desktop metaphors, point-and-click interfaces, and even voice assistants—are evolving into something profoundly more personal, intuitive, and interconnected. At the core of this shift is the concept of an AI Operating System (AI OS): A context-aware, intelligent companion that learns, adapts, teaches, and collaborates in real-time. This emerging reality is driven by rapid advancements in multimodal large language models (LLMs), embedded sensors, and distributed AI ecosystems. An AI OS represents a paradigm shift in AI assistance. A shift from commanding machines to a more symbiotic relationship. A Personalized, Adaptive RelationshipImagine an AI OS that leverages contextual data through direct access to cameras, microphones, biometric sensors, and user data. By doing so it could become capable of interpreting your emotional state, recognizing subtle gestures, body language, and vocal nuances. It wouldn’t simply respond to commands but to how you feel, move, and engage. The result would be a deeply personalized user experience that transforms your devices from static tools into responsive collaborators. Whether you're composing documents, debugging code, preparing presentations, or experiencing creative blocks, an AI OS would attune itself uniquely to you. It would recognize your patterns, preferences, and goals, proactively adapting its support. For instance, an AI OS might gently suggest a break if it detects rising stress, offer visual aids if it knows you're a visual learner, or autonomously generate helpful resources when sensing your intention or struggle. Over time, this nuanced understanding would craft an interaction that feels profoundly intimate. Your technology would grow with you, enhancing efficiency and emotional connection in tandem. From Local to Global IntelligenceThe true potential of an AI OS arises when we consider that AI will become ubiquitous, integrated into everything from smartphones and smart homes to vehicles and public spaces. These intelligent systems will communicate and collaborate, creating a dynamic ecosystem of networked intelligence. Imagine your smart glasses recognizing objects and synchronizing silently with your AI OS to present relevant information instantaneously. Your home AI might sense elevated stress after work, prompting your AI OS to suggest relaxation exercises, playing video games, reading, or watching your favourite video show, all while rescheduling less critical tasks. In professional settings, interconnected AI agents could streamline collaboration, anticipate challenges, and transparently mediate conflicts, fostering more productive interactions. This interconnected intelligence surpasses mere productivity. It reshapes our collaborative processes, education systems, healthcare approaches, and governance models, amplifying critical thinking, creativity, and informed decision-making throughout society. A New Cognitive InfrastructureThe convergence of AI capabilities into an operating system would not only be a technological leap but a socio-cultural transformation. An AI OS blurs digital and cognitive boundaries, enabling users to accomplish complex tasks through intuitive dialogue rather than technical mastery alone. The societal implications are profound:
This shift redefines human-computer interactions at a societal scale, bringing us closer to a reality that was previously only imagined in science fiction. Cautious, Grounded OptimismYet, this promising future demands careful consideration. The depth of personal and contextual data required by an AI OS raises significant ethical questions around privacy, transparency, consent, and security. Risks of misinterpretation, manipulation, or over-dependence highlight the necessity of responsible, human-centric development. However, with thoughtful design prioritizing human flourishing, an AI OS holds extraordinary promise—not to replace humanity but to amplify it. It can foster creativity, expand knowledge, increase productivity, and enhance emotional and cognitive well-being. The Future: Not Just Smarter Devices, but Smarter LivesUltimately an AI OS signifies a shift from operating systems managing files and applications to operating selves. Merging tools, intelligence, and emotional understanding into a unified experience for living, learning, and creating. As AI becomes more embedded, empathetic, and socially integrated, our relationships with technology will become more meaningful. We are no longer simply designing interfaces; we are creating and guiding relationships with intelligent machines that listen, adapt, and evolve with us. This marks not only a technological breakthrough but a cultural renaissance, heralding a future of genuine human-AI symbiosis: A future we must build mindfully, courageously, and optimistically. I’m Excited. Are You? Image generated with ChatGPT.
Over the past year, I’ve found myself observing and participating in the online discourse around generative AI. It’s a fascinating mix of optimism, caution, and—often—overcorrection. One recent pattern I’ve noticed among the more anti-AI voices is a tendency to declare that certain quirks of writing automatically “reveal” that a piece was written by AI. Top of the list? The em dash. Apparently, if you use em dashes in your writing, there’s a decent chance someone online will accuse you of being a bot—or worse, of using ChatGPT. Earlier this week I read ‘Revenge of the Librarians’ by Tom Gauld, a fun and nerdy book that includes a comic about ‘Apostrophe Man’. Apostrophe Man is a literary superhero whose superpower is punctuation. He is both absurd and strangely relatable (maybe not so strange to those of us who like (or feel the need) to correct grammar). The combination of that comic and the em dash paranoia online sparked an idea: What if there was a superhero like Apostrophe Man, but for the em dash instead? Thus, Em Dash Man was born. I played around with ChatGPT to create both images and comics based on this idea. Below are two images of Em Dash Man. One in a retro comic book style and another in a dramatic fantasy realism style.
I kept playing around and iterating, eventually cooking up the two comic panels below. I'm not claiming they’re masterpieces, but the process was fun and enjoyable. I always try to take the opportunity to experiment with ChatGPT. It’s a great way to learn, and I encourage others to do the same. There’s something cathartic about channeling these online arguments into something silly and symbolic. Sometimes satire says more than a thread ever could. EM DASH MAN |
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Generated with DALL·E.
Looking Ahead: The Power of AI Coding Assistance
This experience left me excited to continue exploring coding with ChatGPT. Now that o3-mini-high is available—a model that is supposed to be even more proficient at coding—I’m even more eager to see how it improves code generation, debugging, and refactoring. With each iteration, AI models are becoming more adept at understanding context, implementing changes effectively, and even suggesting improvements I might not have thought of myself.
If this simple Space Invaders game was just the beginning, I can only imagine how far AI-powered coding assistance can take us. Imagine being able to code entirely in natural language! Whether you're a beginner learning the basics or an experienced developer looking to prototype ideas quickly, ChatGPT is proving to be an invaluable tool in the coding process.