The skinny on what's happening in AI - straight from the previous live session:

Highlights

🎯 Claude Launches "Skills" - Compartmentalised AI Expertise

Discussed at [00:01:08]

Anthropic released Skills in preview - repeatable, customisable instructions that Claude can follow in any chat. Access them via Settings > Capabilities > Skills (might need a US VPN to activate!). Skills are folders containing instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude only loads when relevant.

Kyle's take: This is one of those boring but important updates.

Previously, you'd cram everything into system prompts - brand guidelines, visual rules, compliance requirements - clogging your context window with irrelevant stuff. Now Claude scans available skills and loads only what's needed.

I'll be building individual skills for different newsletter types, combining my tone of voice skill with my daily newsletter skill plus transcripts to generate first drafts.

This might replace MCPs in some cases since they're lighter weight. Honestly, my mind's racing with possibilities.

Check out the basic rundown here: https://www.anthropic.com/news/skills

And here’s a Cookbook is you want to go deeper with skills.

Source: Anthropic Blog / Skills documentation

⚖️ Barrister Caught Using AI Cites 10 Fictitious Cases in Court

Discussed at [00:10:55]

Immigration barrister Chowdrey Rahman cited 12 legal authorities in tribunal - 10 didn't exist. Judge found he used "ChatGPT-like software" (weird phrasing, probably a wrapper built on ChatGPT), failed to check accuracy, then tried to hide it. Ooops.

Kyle's take: This isn't an AI problem - it's human stupidity. This follows Deloitte charging Australia AU$440,000 for an AI-generated report full of hallucinations, including citing non-existent researchers. If you ask AI for supporting cases and it can't find them, it'll make them up. In all fields and specialities.

You MUST check, especially in high-stakes situations. In court? Check everything. Birthday card? Who cares.

The real question: how many other barristers are doing this and haven't been caught yet? We need training to make sure people don’t use AI so stupidly.

Source: The Guardian

📉 Wikipedia Traffic Drops 8% as AI Cannibalises Its Content

Discussed at [00:19:46]

Wikipedia seeing 8% year-over-year traffic decline after filtering out bot traffic from Brazil. The irony: while AI causes traffic decline, Wikipedia data is more valuable than ever - it's in every training dataset.

Kyle's take: This is the ultimate parasitic relationship. Every AI model trains on Wikipedia, Google's snippets steal Wikipedia content for years, now AI overviews mean nobody clicks through.

Wikipedia's become functionally less useful because it's all in ChatGPT already. It is objectively less needed now. Because it’s been drained.

Most people won't bother checking Wikipedia to validate ChatGPT's answers - they'll just trust it.

A potential solution? AI companies have billions - they should pay Wikipedia. Pay them to maintain the clean database of Earth's information they're all feeding on.

Without Wikipedia, what will future models train on? Their own hallucinations? Elon's launching an "AI-generated Wikipedia free from bias" - but let’s be honest that'll be an absolute mess…

Source: 404 Media 

👦 Reddit Debates: Should a 9-Year-Old Learn to Code or Vibe Code?

Discussed at [00:15:28]

Parent asks for vibe coding tools for their 9-year-old who wants to make games. Responses: "Why not teach real coding?" "You're denying them useful skills!"

Kyle's take: These people annoy me.

Vibe coding is the gateway drug to real development. You build something immediately, get that dopamine hit - "I made this! Others can use it!" THEN you naturally want more control and back into learning actual code.

The old way: sit with textbooks, learn the foundations, build something useful maybe years later.

Vibe coding way: build a game today, learn GitHub tomorrow, discover you need to get some basic Python next week. For a 9-year-old who wants to make games? Let him vibe code! He'll naturally progress to scripting when he needs more power. Forcing a kid to learn fundamentals first is how you kill their interest.

Instead vibe coding lets us back into coding. We do the thing first then work out what’s going on.

I recently learned to sail. After 15 mins or so of basic “here’s how a boat works” our instructor just chucked us into boats and said “this is the only way you’ll work it out, just make sure to duck wen the boom swings over and you’ll be fine”. Learn by doing.

Source: r/vibecoding discussion

Conference Update: I spoke at AI for the Rest of Us at the Barbican last week - 60+ attendees for a workshop on AI education. Met followers from TikTok and some newsletter readers - hi!! Great to meet some of you in person!