Perplexity threads

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My first blog post referencing ChatGPT was in September, 2023. Before I deleted my account in February, 2026 I had mentioned ChatGPT in 173 blog posts, and had saved twenty-eight “conversations.” I started doing this because a) the threads were (to me) so…fascinating and b) they were too long for a blog post. Even ones I knew nobody else would ever read. In those days I was a little fuzzy on how long the chatbots kept conversations so I saved them as PDFs.

In the ensuing years I settled on Perplexity as my AI of choice (and the only one I pay for: $200/yr) and have saved 28 threads to date:

  • Bruce Sterling quote on knowledge and civilization.pdf
  • Blog posts “Learfield”.pdf
  • Blog tag clouds graphis.pdf
  • Snapshots & Fragments Overview.pdf
  • Early blogging tools.pdf
  • Blog Profiles.pdf
  • Prior to 2016 I was an avid ready of Scott Adams’.pdf
  • Blog – RELIGION .pdf
  • BookBuddy Library Analysis.pdf
  • Perplexity analysis of new reading prescription.pdf
  • Perplexity on anxiety – 1-4.pdf
  • Did Social Media Kill Graffiti?.pdf
  • Nonduality/ How my view evolved.pdf
  • What I mean when I say “nondual”.pdf
  • Noticing What It Feels Like to Notice.rtf
  • The Philosophy of Alan Watts.pdf
  • Understanding Panpsychism.pdf
  • Digital Minimalism & Attention.pdf
  • History of Early Computing.pdf
  • The Illusion of the Self.pdf
  • Meditation and the Brain.pdf
  • AI and the Future of Writing.pdf
  • Exploring the Bootheel.pdf
  • Photography as Time Travel.pdf
  • The Evolution of the Web.pdf
  • Reflections on Aging.pdf

I figured out early on that nobody would ever read these but I was intrigued by the notion some future AI might find them and view them as early examples of how humans interacted with AIs. I share the list above as a pretty summary of how I use these AI platforms (services?).

PS: I’m a compulsive saver. Here’s a list of miscellaneous quotes from books, articles, etc. All or most of which should be included here at smays.com

Siri AI: Calendar search

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It’s been a few years since I decided to move key elements of my online life from Google to Apple. I still have files in Google Drive and Google Docs but most of those are also in my Files app on my devices and in iCloud. As I recall, I wanted to have anything of importance in the Apple ecosystem.

With the arrival of the news and improved Siri AI, that has started to pay off. It’s early days but I’m impressed by what I’ve seen so far. Exhibit A: my Calendar app.

I spent hours entering every event (of any importance) in my Day-Timer’s to the Calendar app on my MacBook (The Great Calendar Project). Even attaching relevant PDFs when I had them. Don’t ask me why. Probably the same reason I’ve maintained this blog for 25 years. Siri AI now gives me a handy (fun?) new way to tap into this archive.

Pretty sure this is not what the Apple programmers had in mind as they worked on Siri AI. Most folks just want to know what’s coming up.

In the coming days and weeks I look forward to exploring what Siri AI can do with all of the data I have (obsessively) collected in various apps.

Siri AI: “It’s a phone-changer”

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I’ve been playing with the new Siri AI and find myself more impressed with every little experiment. I think Apple finally got this right. In a recent Substack article (“125 Tests of the New AI Siri”), David Pogue calls it “a phone-changer.” (That will make more sense after you play with it a little)

It replaces most Google searches, most ChatGPT or Claude interactions, and cumulative hours of fumbling and searching and dragging and copying and finding and tapping and pasting. […] You can ChatGPT your own life […] The hardest part will be getting out of the habit of opening apps, and remembering that you have Siri.

It’s tempting to tell those around you, “Wow! Did you know Siri can…” but I’m going to resist that temptation. Here’s the thing… Android users (who all secretly suffer from Apple envy) will insist their phones have done xyz since the early 70s. The anti-AI crowd simply doesn’t want to hear about… anything AI related. So I’ll try to limit myself to sharing WHOA! moments here. Continue reading →

DirecTV AI support better than human

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Yesterday my wife lost the picture on the TV in her bedroom and called DirecTV Customer Support on the phone. The call went on for quite a while (as such calls do) with the support person having my wife check various settings, changing HDMI port, look up serial number, etc.

As I listened I was impressed with how good this support lady was. Patient, polite (“thanks for confirming”), knowledgable. Maybe the best support call I’ve heard which I mentioned to my wife.

“It’s an AI,” my wife replied.

I was speechless (rare occurrence). I’ve been playing with AI for three years and have heard countless examples of AI “voices” and I’ve always been able to recognize them as such. I was completely fooled by the DirecTV AI.

“Are you sure?” I asked my wife. “Yes. ’She’ said so at least three times during the call.”

Still skeptical, I went to Claude for confirmation:

Voice AI for customer support has gotten good enough that many people can’t tell — that’s actually one of the selling points companies look for. A few things make it convincing:

  • Natural-sounding TTS— modern text-to-speech (services like ElevenLabs, or the voice layers built into platforms like Google’s Contact Center AI, Amazon Connect, etc.) captures pacing, intonation, and small imperfections that used to be a dead giveaway of “robot voice.”
  • Patience is actually easier for AI — it doesn’t get tired, frustrated, or rushed, so infinite calm is a natural byproduct, not a performance.
  • Scripted-but-flexible responses — large phone-support call trees have always been semi-scripted; an LLM just handles the branching more fluidly and can respond to unexpected phrasing.
  • DIRECTV specifically — AT&T (DIRECTV’s former parent) and DIRECTV have both publicly discussed using AI/virtual agents in their support lines, so it’s plausible your wife’s call routed through one, especially for a first-tier troubleshooting step before escalating to a human.

Tells that usually surface eventually: it struggles with a genuinely novel or emotional situation, it can’t access account-specific systems a human rep would casually reference, or the call abruptly transfers once the issue gets complex. If your wife is unsure, she could ask directly — some companies require disclosure now, some don’t.

Am I concerned that I can no longer tell when I’m speaking with a human or an AI? Not really. In my experience, humans are really shitty at this job. Bored/apathetic if not just plain rude. Slow. Everyone knows the drill.

iPod Touch

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Barb found this relic while cleaning out a drawer. Perplexity took a stab at identification (with very little info):

“This appears to be an original (1st-generation) iPod touch, specifically the 16 GB version, made in the 2007–08 period. It is the first “iPhone without the phone” Apple ever sold—and it has become a genuinely evocative piece of early touchscreen history.

At the time, this was unusually advanced hardware:

  • A 3.5-inch Multi‑Touch display, the same basic form factor as the first iPhone.
  • Wi‑Fi for Safari, email, YouTube, and the iTunes Store—but no cellular service, phone calling, GPS, rear camera, Bluetooth stereo audio, or App Store at launch.
  • It originally ran a version of iPhone OS 1, before Apple renamed the platform iOS.
  • The App Store arrived for it with iPhone OS 2 in 2008; this model’s final official operating system was iPhone OS 3.1.3.
  • It used the large 30‑pin Dock Connector, not Lightning or USB‑C, and had a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

The original iPod touch was sold as an 8 GB or 16 GB model at launch; Apple added the 32 GB configuration in February 2008.

I think I purchased my first iPod (Nano) in 2005.

Treadmill headed for a new home

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In 2016 Barb and I paid $1600 for this professional grade treadmill. It’s been in a dark little windowless room in the basement ever since and I’ve used it numerous times over the years. But having joined the YMCA recently, with access to newer better machines, it was time to find it a new home. My good friend Paul came by to pick it up and take it home to his mother (who is excited about having it.)The monster weighs 269 pounds.
Mechanical genius Paul was able to get it through a couple of doorways and up into the bed of his pick up truck.

So long, Mr. Groundhog

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Relocated to an undisclosed location. I paid the wildlife guy 500 bucks to get rid of this guy and all he trapped was a raccoon. “What about the groundhog,” I asked. “It’s $500 for every critter trapped” explained our former wildlife guy.

Barb purchased this trap for $35 bucks. Tossed in some cucumber and voila. He (she?) now roaming free in an undisclosed location. Click the “critters” tag below to see my previous adventures.

Abundance

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It’s a word you hear a lot from proponents of AI. Yeah, some jobs will be eliminated but a bunch of new jobs will be created. And even if the new ones don’t pay as much, AI will usher in an age of abundance that will provide for much of what we need and want (and used to pay for). There are lots of acronyms but UBI seems to get tossed around a lot: Universal Basic Income. Somehow you’ll have all you need (shelter, food, entertainment, etc) and can spend your days in creative (recreational?) pursuits.

Sounds pretty good at first blush. But after watching the latest episode (Season 3, Episode 5) of Special Ops: Lioness, I’m not so sure. One of the characters is a college professor (who happens to be an agent of Chinese intelligence) lecturing an auditorium filled with students:

What is paramount to understand: AI will likely render what I do and what you aspire to do as obsolete.

Likewise to careers in marketing, accounting, engineering… whether software, biological, mechanical… data analysis, research management.

All of these careers will disappear in the next decade.

You must alter the focus of your education to include machine learning, computer vision and management strategies, NLP engineering, computer vision engineering.

And you must prepare yourselves for a world in which your endeavors are not compensated with money.

Your compensation is in the collective betterment of our society, of our state.

What, no money, you say? Yep, that’s the future.

Your efforts will be compensated through the services provided to you in return from the state… housing, health care, food, clean transportation, entertainment.

And as you prepare yourselves for a career in the future, you must prepare yourselves also for a world that replaces the imperialist goals and economic meddling of a “free–market society” with a dedication to a state that in turn dedicates itself to an equitable life for all humankind.

The episode was written by Taylor Sheridan, “an American screenwriter, director, showrunner, and former actor known for redefining the modern Western and neo-noir genres. After roles in Sons of Anarchy and Veronica Mars, he shifted to writing, earning acclaim for his “frontier trilogy” films: Sicario (2015), the Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water (2016), and Wind River (2017), which he also directed. His hit television catalog also includes Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Special Ops: Lioness, and Landman.” (Gemini)