Attending the Futureproof Festival of AI in Vancouver
At the end of October, we will be in Vancouver for Futureproof, the AI festival organized by Kris Krüg and BC + AI.
By Robert ScalesArtificial intelligence
38 posts in this category, newest first.
Writing that sounds like a person in the age of AI
Readers recognize text that was generated and left unedited. These editing habits restore a genuine voice.
By Robert ScalesAI agents for small businesses: what's real
Agents that book, reply and research: what a small business can delegate to one today, and what remains a demonstration.
By Robert ScalesE-commerce trends for small businesses in 2026
What a small online store should prioritize this year, from product data to AI search to shipping from a rural address.
By Robert ScalesOpenAI Codex and the rise of coding agents
This month, coding agents began working in the background. We explain what Codex does, where it fits, and why its work still needs to be verified.
By Robert ScalesCursor and the AI code editor
The code editor can now answer questions about a project. We explain what Cursor changes for small web projects and the practices that prevent unwanted changes.
By Robert ScalesClaude Code in the terminal
Anthropic released a coding agent for the terminal a month ago. It is fast and capable, and it requires clear instructions. The guardrails we apply.
By Robert ScalesAI shopping agents and the future of online stores
Software that shops on behalf of people has begun to appear. What this means for a small online store, and the low-cost improvements we recommend making first.
By Robert ScalesLovable: from an idea to a web app
Lovable makes the first version of a web app easy to produce. The second version, the one people actually use, still requires careful planning.
By Robert ScalesVibe coding: building software by describing it
Describing software is becoming a way of building it. What vibe coding is useful for, and what still needs to be verified by a person.
By Robert ScalesMachine learning, simply explained
Machine learning received two Nobel prizes this fall. We explain what it is, in plain language, for people who use AI tools at work.
By Robert ScalesNarrative games and AI game masters
Two years of using AI as a game master for solo role-playing. What this experience has taught us about memory, rules and surprise, and about business chatbots.
By Robert ScalesAutomation for small businesses: Zapier, Make and AI
Zapier and Make now allow an AI step in the middle of a workflow. We present five ordinary automations worth setting up, and how to prevent them from failing unnoticed.
By Robert ScalesHow can AI be used for SEO? A practical workflow
Since Google's March spam policies, sites that mass-produced AI content have been losing ground. We present a workflow that uses AI effectively, along with the steps that must remain human.
By Robert ScalesWhat do AI Overviews mean for the SEO of small sites?
Google has just placed AI-generated answers at the top of search results. We explain what this changes for small sites and which steps we recommend taking now.
By Robert ScalesHow can AI help you write a business plan?
AI can produce a complete business plan in a minute, but most of its content is not grounded in fact. We explain how to use it instead as a sparring partner that strengthens your plan.
By Robert ScalesClaude, Gemini and ChatGPT: choosing an AI assistant
This spring, three serious AI assistants are available at the same time. Here is how to compare them on your own work, and why the method matters more than the winner.
By Robert ScalesCritical thinking when AI is part of the work
ChatGPT has now been part of daily life for a year. Our main concern is how quickly users have stopped questioning its answers.
By Robert ScalesCustom GPTs and AI assistants for business
OpenAI now lets anyone build a custom GPT. What a custom assistant does well, where its limits lie, and why the instructions matter most.
By Robert ScalesTeaching entrepreneurship with ChatGPT in the room
Learners use ChatGPT for business plans regardless of course policy. How to teach with it so that the thinking remains their own.
By Robert ScalesAI translation and automation for dive businesses
Diving operates in dozens of languages, and AI translation is improving rapidly. Safety wording, however, cannot be approximate in any language.
By Robert ScalesAI product descriptions for online stores: where they help and where they hurt
Generative AI can draft a hundred product descriptions in an hour. Where this helps an online store, and where it can cause harm that goes unnoticed.
By Robert ScalesSearch Generative Experience and the future of clicks
Google is testing AI answers above the search results. If users click less, what role does a business website play?
By Robert ScalesPublishing A Beginner's Guide to ChatGPT
We wrote a beginner's guide to ChatGPT in English and French. What the project has taught us about explaining a tool that evolves constantly.
By Robert ScalesGPT-4 and multimodal AI: what just changed
GPT-4 was released on March 14. Its reasoning is considerably stronger and it can read images, but it still invents sources.
By Robert ScalesChatGPT for small business: ten real uses
ChatGPT is two months old and most people have tried it at least once. Ten uses that genuinely help a small business, and what to verify each time.
By Robert ScalesStarting ChatGPT RPG: a language model as game master
Early tests of a language model as game master for solo role-playing, in the weeks around ChatGPT's launch. What works and what breaks.
By Robert ScalesChatGPT is here
The same model family, a new interface, and suddenly the public is engaging with it. Observations from the first week of ChatGPT.
By Robert ScalesImage generators arrive: Midjourney, DALL·E and Stable Diffusion
In a single summer, image creation from a sentence has become available to everyone. What this means for marketing, and why authentic photos remain more effective.
By Robert ScalesGPT-3 and early access: impressive results raise immediate questions
OpenAI has opened GPT-3 to a waiting list. Its writing is convincing enough to mislead readers, which is precisely the concern. Initial observations from the paper and the beta.
By Robert ScalesAI ethics for business owners, in plain words
This year's major AI ethics principles, translated into practical rules for a small business: bias, privacy, honesty with customers and human oversight.
By Robert ScalesMachine learning for small businesses: what is usable today
Most small businesses already use AI without identifying it as such. What is usable today, what requires caution, and why chatbots currently fall short.
By Robert ScalesGPT-2 and machines that can now write
OpenAI is withholding the full GPT-2 model because of what it can write. Fluent text can be entirely wrong, which changes how online content should be read.
By Robert ScalesWhy AI deserves a small business's attention now
AI is not a future development; it is already present in everyday tools such as email. What machine learning is, where it operates in your tools, and why learning the basics now is worthwhile.
By Robert ScalesAttention Is All You Need: a translation paper marketers should notice
Google researchers have published a paper on machine translation titled Attention Is All You Need. Few people in marketing will read it, yet it deserves their attention.
By Robert ScalesChatbots on Messenger: first impressions
Facebook opened Messenger to bots last month. A bot can answer "what time do you open?" but not "is it safe for my child?" That difference matters.
By Robert ScalesSaskatchewan Interactive 2007 - Convergence or Divergence in Tomorrow's Web
Session notes: Chris Brooks and Scott Bateman (U of S) on the Semantic Web, Web 2.0 and why the two need to converge.
By Roland TanglaoSoftware Agents in Sci-Fi
Science fiction can be a valuable medium for visualizing future trends in technology, such as software agents that act on behalf of a user.
By Mark YuasaYour business deserves to be found.
Tell us about your project. We answer in English or French, and we travel anywhere in the MRC de Papineau.