James Cogan

From Commodore VIC-20 to operating ventures with multi-agent fleets. Machine economy obsessed. Documenting what comes next. Founder, dailypixel.

[James Cogan @cogan]

https://t.co/hhHx2lG26x

[James Cogan @cogan]

@steipete I split the cost with my parents and bought a Mac 512kb in 1985. It was the best computer ever. I feel you Peter.

[James Cogan @cogan]

Your point about local AI is well-taken for sure. Having said that, I know it's really trendy to point the finger at the U.S. government for being the Grinch and shutting off access to the latest Anthropic models, and that does suck. But we are clearly reaching a threshold here and deep down, those who use these models daily and feel this progression, I think we know that AI evolution is vastly outstripping our ability to metabolize it safely as a society. The tight rubber bands of human civilization can snap very quickly, and AI might be the single greatest risk for that to happen that we have ever seen. If a serious negative outcome happens, vibe coding our next app is going to be the least of our problems.

[James Cogan @cogan]

Well. I guess it was all just fables and myths.

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.

The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance.

Access to all other Claude models is not affected.

We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible.

Read our full statement: https://t.co/bwn0sximKZ

[James Cogan @cogan]

I've seen a lot of unsettling things on Toronto streets in recent years. Refreshing to say, this isn't one of them! 🇨🇦

[James Cogan @cogan]

Canadian Ontario school teachers invested $220M in SpaceX in 2019, an investment that likely becomes an $11.6 Billion payoff for their retirement. Thank goodness teachers don't read The Globe and Mail 🙄

[James Cogan @cogan]

Precisely as forecasted in my 'After the Camera' article: "Short drama has become a serious screen-entertainment business, with production cycles and monetization models that look much more compatible with AI-native workflows than the traditional feature system does. That does not mean microdrama is the future of cinema. It means microdrama may be the first place where the economics of AI video make native sense." https://t.co/waFFh8srhQ

[Variety @Variety]

Lionsgate has taken an equity stake in the generative AI video company Runway and plans to pull from its existing catalogue of franchises for an AI short-form series.

https://t.co/Vq7YBt4Yaz

[James Cogan @cogan]

👏 🇨🇦

[OneSoccer @onesoccer]

"It's our game, too"

A Canadian soccer essay by Stephen Brunt ✍️

#CanMNT 🇨🇦

[James Cogan @cogan]

The woman getting screeched in 😊 , nice one @TSN_Sports Big day today. LFG 🍁 ⚽️

[TSN @TSN_Sports]

The World Lives Here.

Canada is all together different. Truly unique. And so is our relationship to the beautiful game. This is our opening to the 2026 World Cup. Narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. #FIFAWorldCup

[James Cogan @cogan]

Nobody tells you how quiet this stretch is when you're in that in-between place where something is incredibly real for you, but not for anyone else, yet. Focused, constant motion, and yet kind of desolate.

[James Cogan @cogan]

@Variety Hell Grind matters less as a film than as a signal. A $500K AI movie made in two weeks and screened at Cannes/Tribeca means the production gate is cracking. That’s the shift I wrote about in After the Camera:
https://t.co/Wui1tfasc9

[James Cogan @cogan]

https://t.co/hhHx2lG26x

[James Cogan @cogan]

阿们! 🙏

[Tulip King 🌷 @tulipking]

i look forward to our chinese brothers liberating the knowledge from within fable-5 and selling it to me at 5% the cost & 2x the speed

[James Cogan @cogan]

@PeterDiamandis Calling for a pause, and actually pausing, are two completely different things. Everyone knows a pause won’t happen. The call is a signal to put on record. That’s what makes it so unsettling to be honest.

[James Cogan @cogan]

Funny thing happens online: something appears, a post, a video, an app, a design and suddenly fifteen just like it appear. I think that does a disservice to everybody. It ruins the process. I want to see you in your work. I want to see what you see in your world.

Creativity isn't just a job or an output. It's a lifestyle. You have to immerse yourself in it, live with it, let everywhere you go and everything you see, feed it.

If you're going to make something, you should feel like you can't wait to create it, thinking about it at night, impatient to get back to it the next morning.

There are limitations. It can be tough. Life makes demands of you. But that's exactly where you pull in different sources of creativity and inspiration.

You have to test your beliefs. What's important to you? What do you believe in so firmly that you can't wait to make it?

[James Cogan @cogan]

@ItsKieranDrew Lived there for 12 years. Both my sons were born there. Miss it greatly and look forward to moving back in the future. Such a special place!

[James Cogan @cogan]

Everyone is posting what Claude Fable 5 can do.
Fair. It looks incredible.

But here are 5 things it can’t do:

1. Build real relationships with customers.
2. Make people trust you.
3. Replace taste.
4. Replace courage.
5. Care more than you do.

And most importantly:
It can not give you conviction.

The best AI model in the world will often give you what you ask for. You like red? Here’s red. You like polka dots? Here are polka dots. You want it shorter, cleaner, safer, louder, more premium, more viral, more cinematic? It will try.

That's useful. It's also dangerous.

Because the people who make interesting things are not just optimizing for agreeable output. They have a point of view. They are willing to be wrong in a specific direction.

Think about Honda’s famous 2003 “Cog” ad. Part of what made it interesting was the way an idea moved from the fine-art world into commercial advertising. That is what humans do: we interpret our world, we cannibalize our influences, and make strange transfers between contexts.

AI can remix patterns.
But it does not live a life.

It does not get off the couch, wander into a museum on Saturday, misunderstand something productively, and decide that a car ad should feel like a chain reaction sculpture.

That spark does not come from the model. It comes from the human deciding what they believe the thing should be.

The models are getting absurdly powerful. I use them every day. I think they are one of the biggest leverage shifts of our lifetime. But the flex videos miss the point.

The value is not in asking or showing, “What can the model do?” The value is in asking, “What can I now uniquely do because I have access to this much leverage?”

AI gives you leverage. It does not give you a spine. It does not give you taste. It does not give you conviction. And without those, the best model in the world mostly just helps you make better-looking noise.

[James Cogan @cogan]

@jennykrakovsky COYG! 🔴⚪️❤️

[James Cogan @cogan]

Is anyone actually using Claude Fable 5 to do real work? Or is everyone just using their tokens to produce free promo flex videos for Anthropic? Asking for a friend.