A Z Mackay

30 years inside tech. Now writing about what it's doing to us. Author of Future Tense, the newsletter six months ahead of the conversation. 🖖

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

@dylanscandinaro 🖖

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

In 2025, experienced developers using AI were 19% slower at real tasks. But they believed they were 20% faster. That perception gap is the entire hype cycle in miniature. (article link in bio).

#AI #HypeCycle #TechPredictions #FutureTense #CollectiveDelusion

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

Cambridge Dictionary's word of the year is "parasocial." 72% of American teens have used AI companions. A third find them as satisfying as real friendships. I wrote about what that reveals. (link in bio)

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

We all see the manipulation now.
We correct less.
We rage less.
We just… scroll, exhausted.

Meet the dropouts who quit and paid with their social lives (tracked in tragic spreadsheets).

Meet the optimizers who hate the game but master it anyway (irony audits included).

The machine doesn’t want you ignorant.

It wants you exactly this aware.

https://t.co/mUpaYO4tbr

[KaEl @BroadenView]

" What’s harder to measure is whether anyone is thinking, or if we’ve simply built a society that no longer requires it for most roles. "

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

With Gemini 3's release ushering in even more powerful AI tools, the societal "sorting" between independent thinkers and AI-dependent performers is accelerating. It's reshaping education, jobs, and class divides. https://t.co/5EQmva0JBo #AI #Gemini3

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

With Gemini 3's release ushering in even more powerful AI tools, the societal "sorting" between independent thinkers and AI-dependent performers is accelerating. It's reshaping education, jobs, and class divides. https://t.co/5EQmva0JBo #AI #Gemini3

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

The rocks keep coming. Always just rocks. We keep looking, because accepting the silence means confronting what we're wired to deny.
Read the full essay: https://t.co/esL9nfXUQg

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

October 2025. A Harvard professor calculated the odds at one in ten quadrillion. NASA's scientists said "it looks like a comet."
The gap between those two positions reveals more about human psychology than cometary composition.

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

Social pain uses the same brain regions as physical pain. Cosmic loneliness isn't metaphor. It hurts. And we're designed for a world different from the one we inhabit: Paleolithic brains confronting potential cosmic emptiness.

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

Every major AI lab just pivoted to "reasoning models" that think for minutes before answering... except the thinking happens where you can't see it. Clean outputs, hidden deliberation, premium pricing for cognition you can't audit. When did we decide inscrutability was sophistication?

https://t.co/o1iGqbfLBW

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #TechCriticism #OpenAI #Anthropic #ReasoningModels #FutureTense

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

Thinking is becoming expensive. Performance is becoming free.

The two-tier system is being built in real time through "personalized learning."

You have 18 months before this becomes obvious to everyone.

https://t.co/5EQmva1hqW

#futuretense

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

TICKET #847392
STATUS: PENDING
ISSUE: National financial crisis WAIT TIME: 6-8 months
"Have you tried restarting your economy?"
Welcome to sovereignty as a service.
https://t.co/t3Jrx4repX

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

@shivani_3000 @jackclarkSF People don't build decentralized alternatives to things they trust.

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

@bayeslord The recursion keeps improving at recursion. The rest remains unclear.

[A Z Mackay @azmackay]

@eshear Seasons happen to you. Outcomes happen because of you. Confusing these categories is the entire business model of inspirational content.