Jonathan Cook

I just saw someone promoting an analytic system with "a mechanically accurate map of human emotional architecture".

If you describe human emotions mechanically, you are by definition not understanding emotions accurately.

Let's not use euphemisms to describe what Anthropic has done.
Anthropic has not loosened its commitment to maintaining ethical guardrails. It has abandoned its ethics in a capitulation to fascism.

A little branding tip to Reddit:
When you're dealing with the scandal of Reddit voluntarily handing over information to the federal government to target people who are critical of the President...

... don't choose that time to promote a game on Reddit called Two Spies.

Is Generative AI Out Of Time? What happens to automated market research when bots can’t tell the time?

Is generative AI out of time?
What are the implications for market research?
jonathanccook.medium.com/is-generativ...

Market Research and the Sea Snail Generative AI Can’t Get Right What Micromelo guamensis suggests about using AI tools instead of authentic market research

The sea snail Micromelo guamensis presents a warning for businesses who believe they can replace human market research with generative AI simulations.
jonathanccook.medium.com/market-resea...

Speed kills attention.
Enough.
Brands don't need to say more.

They need to say less.
Only what really matters.
Constant babble convinces no one.

Keep it simple.
Find your center.
Be what you are.

Productivity is not what people trust.

Darwin Day Decisions In An Age Of Artifice What are humans willing to do to help each other through the struggle of technological revolution?

On Darwin Day, I ask what humans are willing to do to support each other through this time of technological revolution. Technology does not determine our society. We have choices to make.
jonathanccook.medium.com/darwin-day-d...

Hoodwinked by Mara Einstein and Converted by Neil Hoyne both use the metaphor of marketing as a religious practice.

Walking through Barnes & Noble, I noticed that the two books on the Business shelves turned outward to face customers both considered business as a religious practice. One described customers as Converted, while the other warned that they are being Hoodwinked by marketing cults.

The Fabric of Technology On human context

When we think about technology, we need to think contextually, about the way that text is woven like a textile in our culture to create textures of meaning that cannot be found in digital simulations.

Technology was a fabric before it was a machine.

medium.com/@jonathancco...

I woke up this morning, and looked at my shadow on the snow, and like a groundhog realizing that spring will soon return, the thought struck me that AI stands for automated imitation.
#AI #AutomatedImitation

Asking Questions In An Age Of Prompts The golden age of the prompt engineer may have already come and gone. It's become common practice to cut the human out of that loop.

In an age of promptly dismissed prompts, where might more enduring questions lead us?
www.linkedin.com/pulse/asking...
#questions

Finding Sense in Hands On Research Things don't make sense in the way they used to. We have more data than ever before, which we can analyze with automated tools in the blink of an eye.

What does good qualtitative market research have in common with baking cookies? Get a sense of the sensory foundation of sensemaking. #sensemaking #mrx #qualitative www.linkedin.com/pulse/findin...

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows | Words for Deep Emotions Discover invented words for complex emotions in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows—a poetic lens on the human condition and the hidden depths of feeling.

"The word sadness originally meant fullness, to be filled to the brim with some intensity of experience."
#emotionalgranularity #sad #emotions
www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com

OpenAI Reportedly Planning to Make ChatGPT "Prioritize" Advertisers in Conversation OpenAI employees working on ChatGPT report plans to unleash sponsored advertisements above organic results.

How can market researchers using Anthropic Interviewer or other generative AI platforms know that their research results aren't being manipulated by efforts to monetize the platforms with advertising?
How does anyone know what the biases inherent in generative AI are?
futurism.com/artificial-i...

inept article about emotional connection in marketing with a terrible image featuring a backwards megaphone

The first step in establishing an emotional connection in your marketing strategy is to demonstrate that you are yourself emotionally engaged in other people's lives and what you want to sell to them.

Using obviously AI generated images is a great way to show you are emotionally disengaged.

The generative AI in Coca-Cola's advertisement isn't just tacky. It's a reminder of the inhumanity of the corporation behind the fizzy sugar water.

Of Trusted Brands And The Jobs They Will Not Do When brands show the humanity within their work, they demonstrate what they believe is worthy of some loving inefficiency.

In this moment, we demonstrate our values through what we refuse to automate.
Humanity is sacred. That's where I draw the line.
#humanism
medium.com/@jonathancco...

Jonathan Cook Open To Humans

Targeted marketing in this golden age of automated AI advertising is often surprisingly clunky.
I'm not looking for ways to speed up my work. I'd rather make the time I have count.
On LinkedIn, I'm open to humans.
www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-s...

Jonathan Raney clumsy marketing fail

The artifice of online connection is growing thin.

Jonathan Raney addresses me as {FIRST_NAME} and asks me a question about my team's codebase. I don't have a team with a codebase.

The facade of automated marketing inevitable falls apart, because it's a symptom of insincerity. That always shows.

What If We Made 2026 A Year For Humans First? Six years ago, I was putting together a podcast called This Human Business. The podcast was about the efforts of people who attempt to…

What if we made 2026 a year to put humans first?
jonathanccook.medium.com/what-if-we-m...

Is Your Algorithm Arousing Antifa? Employees lose respect for a company that fails to recognize the value of the human species. Try showing up to work at a company where half of your colleagues have been fired, and the other half are b...

Is your algorithm arousing Antifa? #HumanBusiness #AI
www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-a...

Do You Like Your Customers... Or Is It Just Transactional? Can corporations and customers be friends? To some people, it will sound strange even asking this question. Of course, I'm giving it a When Harry Met Sally spin, but let's try it from a different angl...

What if you did business as if you actually like your customers?
#MRX #qualitative

www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-you...

I remember watching an interview with a computer scientist the day the first computer virus hit the fledgling Internet. He had tears in his eyes. He couldn’t imagine someone using the Internet for malicious purposes. I remember marveling at his naivety.

We Need To Rewild The Internet  | NOEMA The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.

Digital platforms have degraded the diversity of online spaces. The time has come to rewild the internet.
www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-r...

Generative AI is a fascist project.
Try using your brain instead.
Don't surrender your creativity.

What Generative AI Actually Looks Like One of the few stable characteristics of generative AI technology is that it feels inevitable. "AI is the future," people say, "so you better get on board with it, or you'll get left behind.

Generative AI doesn't look like a glowing orb.
AI looks like a Terawulf data center of Cayuga Lake that will serve Terawulf's client G42, which helps the government of the UAE spy on and torture its citizens.
www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-g...

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory. www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

Oh my god some fucking tech dingdong posted this on Twitter with the caption "AI games are going to be amazing" totally seriously, you have to watch it. You have to. In full screen.

A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley Some are worried that the rapid rise in the value of AI tech companies may be a bubble waiting to burst.

Sam Altman says of generative AI: "There's something real happening here."
Jeff Bezos says of generative AI: "This is real."

When tech tycoons have to begin defending the very idea that a technology is even real, it's a sign of something unreal going on.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

This Is How the AI Bubble Bursts Yale SOM leadership expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and co-author Stephen Henriques write that the tangle of AI deals among tech giants could be signs of dangerous overinvestment in the developing technolog...

"Further innovation in semiconductor chip design or major advances in quantum computing, as hundreds of billions of dollars in data center infrastructure are being deployed, would immediately leave much of that investment useless in the medium to long term." insights.som.yale.edu/insights/thi...