Rich Washburn

There's a conversation happening right now that sounds informed but isn't. It goes something like this: AI is destroying the planet. One query uses a pound of water. AI is consuming hundreds of millions of gigawatts of electricity. We're cooking the Earth so you can ask ChatGPT what to make for dinner. Let me stop you right there. These claims aren't just overstated — they're factually wrong and the units alone will tell you everything you need to know about who's driving the narrative. Let's...

Most people have never heard of GitHub. Most people's lives run on it anyway. If you've used software in the last fifteen years — and you have — there's a GitHub link somewhere in its ancestry. Not metaphorically. Literally. The app on your phone, the website you're reading this on, the operating system in your car, the code running in the hospital down the street. Somewhere upstream, at some point in its creation, a developer pushed code to GitHub. That's just how the modern world works now....

I was in New York for a reason. A real one. But while that was happening, something else was running in the background. It always does.