News Roundup - May 2026
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Frictionless Decisions brings you counterintuitive, original, jargon-free ideas for connecting data to decisions. Every week.
New technologies form us by the way they process and present information; they shape us into their image. We know this.
It took eighty years for the telegraph and photography to give us television, but then it changed every part of American life into entertainment, almost overnight. Forty years later, digital photos made us look better than we did in real life; now (twenty years later), AI makes us sound smarter than we really are.
“The takeover is complete,” says bestselling author Nicholas Carr.
I’m hearing this message across the board, from the very people working inside The Machine: thoughtful, intentional resistance will keep you sane - and human. You can’t avoid technology, but you can certainly resist the ways it forms you. AI shapes us faster and more deeply than its predecessors.
That’s the focus of this month’s Frictionless Decisions news roundup. The articles below suggest a deeper, more thoughtful approach than most. Digesting all this takes a lot of time (which you probably don’t have), so I’ve curated the best articles and posts I’ve read on this topic for you.
Give them a read!
Metannoying, by Hollis Robbins, Anecdotal Value, February 26, 2026.
Did you every wonder why AI writing is so boring? Robbins shows you patterns in AI writing and explains why they have this numbing effect on your mind. Maybe after reading this, AI writing will annoy you just as much as it bugs me.
If you don’t read this article, at least enjoy these brilliant notes from a great writer:
“LLM-generated prose wants so much to be clear to everyone that it talks down to readers who don’t need the extra words, correcting beliefs they don’t hold, resolving contrasts they’ve already computed.”
- ”The ‘corrective contrast’ construction reduces ambiguity in the output space. Users want clarity. “Not X but Y” to the LLM is an insurance policy on clarity. Luckily for the designers of LLMs, corrective contrast also sounds cool, memorable, and often profound, at least in moderation. “I came not to bring peace but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34). Or “it’s not the heat it’s the humidity.”
Habits for Humanity in the Age of AI by Ben Sasse, The Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2026.
If you haven’t been following the former US Senator’s story, use this article to jump in. It’s happening in real time. Don’t miss his thoughts on technology.
How to Stay Human in an AI World by Pete Nicholas, The Gospel Coalition, May 13, 2026.
I’m not a fan of pastors commenting on AI, but this is a good take. Nicholas doesn’t pretend to explain AI, he simply focuses entirely on age-old habits that keep you human. It starts with fellowship…
The Bitter Lesson (of Decision Making), Data Tinkerer, April 30, 2026.
Machines love races; they always win. Let’s make that more specific: compute power always crushes the humans in the loop. And the power curve continues to accelerate. Maybe we should just get better at feeding The Machine, as the author encourages.
Is this a hopeless future? Well, yes - depending where you place your hope. Also readThe Bitter Lesson for an even more bleak assessment.
What Leading a Data Team Actually Looks Like Right Now, Seattle Data Guy, May 14, 2026
I just love Ben’s street-level take on data management: “Data teams continue to be a catch-all team. Automations, AI, Dashboards, Analytics, Machine Learning, Data Apps. They can do it all, folks.” Or, at least that’s the expectation. Sounds exhausting, right? Keep reading!
Why Does AI Coding Make You Feel 10x More Productive And Exhausted, by Alejandro Aboy, Career Query Lessons, May 17, 2026.
It’s much better to listen to these data leaders than pundits like me! I love how leaders like Ale and Ben think; no pretention, only authentic advice and perspective. Yeah, automation promises freedom but delivers exhaustion. I was reminded of that yesterday when my addiction to Apple Maps got me lost for the 9th time this month.
Batter Up: AI, Labor, and the Policy Gap Nobody Is Closing by John Hughes, Modern Data 101, April 30, 2026.
What do you think about Human In The Loop (HITL)? I filed this article under my “manage it and it will be okay” category; the author uses the new Major League Baseball strike zone rules as an example of good “human-in-the-loop” practices. Is AI simply a threat to jobs? Is policy a solution? Or is it something darker?
The SaaS Apocalypse Fallacy: Why AI Raises the Value of the SaaS Bundle by Yakov Shkolnikov, Social Science Research Network, April 27, 2026.
CIOs, have you wondered about the hidden cost of using AI tools to build in-house applications? Yakov unearths these for you. Take this dose of realism to heart before your next application decision. “AI coding tools make the build path look dramatically cheaper and 2x faster than it is, which encourages organizations to skip the discipline a normal build-versus-buy analysis would impose,” he argues. It’s not just an opinion - Yakov proves it with academic research.
To remind you of this week’s data concept, enjoy The Voice, by Ultravox, from the Frictionless Data Spotify playlist.
For the full story about making data flow faster and better, check out Frictionless Data on Amazon.
