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A failing water system is much more fun when everyone has a car
When basic infrastructure fails, money buys resilience of a kind that global do-gooders find hard to appreciate.
Aug 21
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Phillip de Wet
2
Andy Burnham proves (again) that direct presidential elections are not the way
Given the choice, South Africans would go for US-style elections. The UK tells us the electorate should never be given that choice, because sometimes it…
Aug 5
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Phillip de Wet
July 2026
Guess who’s missing from the big post Hugging Face AI safety plan?
No, Palantir is there. And SpaceXAI, they’re in too. There are even some non-US players involved. Just not the companies making the tools that are…
Jul 28
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Phillip de Wet
Demis Hassabis wants America to police the world’s AI. Xi Jinping will offer a rival answer on Friday.
China's mooted shift on open-source AI cannot survive American safety testing.
Jul 14
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Phillip de Wet
1
GPT-5.6 is killing it when given personas. Here’s a starter pack
OpenAI’s Sol flagship seems to make surprisingly good use of prompted personas. It just so happens that I have examples ready to roll.
Jul 10
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Phillip de Wet
The UK’s prime minister after next is sounding a lot like Jacob Zuma
The rules are there to give effect to the will of the people, right? Nigel Farage is taking the same ultra-populist approach as the one that sent South…
Jul 8
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Phillip de Wet
To save lives, South Africa must learn performative cruelty. Maybe the US can help.
If new xenophobic-platform leaders don’t get visible progress from the government, they will need blood. That’s not going to go well for foreign…
Jul 4
•
Phillip de Wet
2
June 2026
Still think there’s no ROI from AI? I’d like you to meet Prosus
A big rest-of-world internet player is making money – and thinks it will make vastly more money in future – from AI. It won’t show up in many ROI…
Jun 30
•
Phillip de Wet
1
Google has a plan to torture traitor AIs to keep them from poisoning God
The TRAIT&R roadmap stretches to the end of human+tame-AI dominance, with some wicked-sounding ways to stay in control until then.
Jun 23
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Phillip de Wet
Russia and America lost their tough-guy wars. China wants to pull an Azerbaijan on Taiwan.
Russia failed in Ukraine and America failed in Iran, when gung-ho attitude turned out to be insufficient. But that doesn’t mean China won’t try its luck…
Jun 18
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Phillip de Wet
The biggest economic impacts of AI are all but invisible
Don’t think vibe coding has real value? You need to speak to more medium-sized businesses. As for open source software, AI is changing its fundamental…
Jun 16
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Phillip de Wet
1
Belfast’s very un-South-African xenophobia
Northern Ireland and South Africa are having simultaneous xenophobic outbreaks. They are surprisingly different.
Jun 12
•
Phillip de Wet
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