2026-01-08 22:35:44
I expect a lot of people to be bothered by ChatGPT Health. Of course you shouldn’t use AI as a replacement for a human doctor. And what about privacy?
AI for health questions has actually gotten really good in the last year. It’s better at explaining lab results. It’s better at understanding medications. It’s just generally better at pointing us in the right direction about complex topics.
When my mom got sick last year, I spent many days in the hospital, in the ER, at rehab facilities, talking to nurses and doctors. It’s what inspired me to make Micro.blog free for nurses. Doctors and nurses are trying their best and sometimes they do work miracles, but they are overwhelmed by the system. Too many things fall through the cracks.
There are a couple of significant problems that could be addressed by AI:
I can’t count how many times I had to explain my mom’s medical history to a new nurse or doctor, just to get them up to speed. They need the full picture, not just a quick glance at the latest vitals and blood work. And at the same time, doctors have to spend precious minutes summarizing a procedure or medication in terms that we can understand.
I don’t have even the slightest worry that AI will replace doctors. There will always be more work than they can handle. Technology should be an amplifier, letting professionals do their jobs more effectively, so they can focus more time on the things that only they can do.
We are only at the very beginning with AI for health, and it can be scary to move too quickly. But in a decade, if this is properly woven into the fabric of health care, it will save lives. I’m not talking about breakthroughs and cures, at least not yet. There is mundane work that breaks down under the frenzy and scale of modern health care — context, communication, and surfacing the right details at the right time — problems that LLMs are well suited to fix.
2026-01-07 11:05:06
It has been an unbelievable nine years since I launched the Kickstarter for Micro.blog. Even after I finally published the book online, a few things still nagged at me about the structure and text. I had hoped in the last couple of years to address them.
Actually running Micro.blog and improving it is my priority, though. We deploy changes multiple times a week, fixing bugs and adding features. Maintaining the apps across iOS, Android, and Mac.
Over the holidays and the new year, I went back to the book draft and gave it a fresh look. I updated a bunch of things, improving the flow of a few sections, adding a new chapter about Bluesky and the AT Protocol, fixing typos and diagrams.
The book clearly grew out of control, filled with my thoughts and essays, at times losing focus. I could never decide if it was a history of the open web, a technical write-up of new protocols, or a call to action, so it is all three. In some sections, I think it works well. In others, it takes too long to get to the point, detouring into my own feelings.
As much as I wish I could continue to rework several parts of the book, I have to call it. I don’t plan on making any more text changes. You can read it online or download the latest ePub. It’s as done as it can be with the time I have.
Thank you. I hope the book is a unique snapshot of where we are with blogging and social media. Many of the threads of the open social web that began years ago have been followed to a stopping point. Now we get to see what comes next.
2026-01-07 01:25:34
I mentioned this on our bonus episode of Core Intuition last month, but I don’t think I’ve blogged about it… Sometimes AI will come up with something and I’ll think, “Damn, that is better than what I would have written myself.” Annoying! My only fix is to edit nearly everything to make it my own.
2026-01-07 01:02:30
I wrote most of my book years ago, so this is the first time I’ve actually run it through AI to get some feedback on structure, redundancies to trim, and grammar problems. It’s valuable, but it’s also leaving me with doubt that I didn’t have before.
Let’s say I let AI come up with a bridge paragraph that helps tie something together. Just a few sentences. Is it still my work? Am I contributing in a small way to the slop of the web?
For a blog post, this wouldn’t bother me. There is something about a “book” that gives me pause, even though it’s 50k of my own words. The tiny part that AI helped with would barely register.
I expect artists will go through the same dilemma. Art that is 95% human, 5% robot. Or podcasters that let AI edit each episode. You might think editing doesn’t matter, but there is a craft to it and how it shapes the pacing of a show.
This balance of how much of creative work we give up will be different for everyone. There will be purists for which nothing short of 100% human will be acceptable. I get that, and perhaps for some things I agree. For programming, I would go in the opposite direction, fine if AI writes more and more code.
Books and blogs are different than programming for me. I want the human voice. When I read other people’s blogs, I want to feel a connection to the authors. I want my own book to be genuine, and I think it is, even if there are bits here and there where a robot pointed me in the right direction.
2026-01-06 23:35:01
When I experimented with not federating my posts for a few months, I also accidentally muted everything from Mastodon. Now that I’m seeing everything again, I’m not sure my life is better. Perhaps there should be a preference to temporary hide external posts — Mastodon, Bluesky, Tumblr, etc.
