The first time I ever used dial-up internet was sometime in the 1990s. Some of you will remember that a company called CompuServe used to mail out floppy disks with "10 free hours." And I still remember the feeling of amazement the first time I tried it. Suddenly, I could chat with people from around the world. Remember a/s/l? It was so enthralling that those 10 free hours certainly didn't last very long.

Fast forward to more recent times, and I got that exact same feeling of amazement when I started diving into crypto. The first time I created a wallet, logged into to a service (using only the wallet), and then transferred funds around, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a fundamental shift in how the world works." A lightbulb went off. And I still feel this way about crypto, which is why I remain long ETH.

But now I'm also excited about AI (along with the rest of the world). With every new model release, it gets that much more impressive. Last week I wrote about Gemini 3 and, since then, I decided to cancel my ChatGPT subscription and move all my activity over to it. I'm sure that a better model will get released before we know it, but for right now I'm having a lot of fun creating just about everything.

Here's a cartoon isometric of Toronto that I prompted to include "landmarks" and the day's weather.

Here's a photo of a woman standing in the middle of a street in Tokyo wearing a trench coat and holding an umbrella. My prompt also asked it to make it look like a "grainy digital photo."

And here's a knolling shot (new word I just learned) featuring the gear of a global citizen (or globizen if you will). I prompted each of the objects, down to the white panel on the Blue Jays hat.

It's not perfect. Text remains an issue. If you look closely at the front of the passports or the text on the Fujifilm camera, you'll see that it's AI. But it's only a matter of time before this goes away. These kinds of images used to require a lot of time and effort. Now I can create them with one hand on my phone while I'm eating a bowl of cereal and having a morning coffee. There's zero marginal cost.

Thank goodness I've got more than 10 hours of usage.

Google is well aware that traditional search is going to die (or at least go away for the vast majority of use cases). I don't want to search for things if I can just be told the answer.

Here's an example. I was installing new light fixtures in our bedrooms this week and I wanted a refresher on wire colors.

Historically, I would have done a Google Search, which would have then led me to some website or to some lengthy YouTube video that I didn't actually want to watch and that I would have had to scan through to find the salient parts.

But today that feels old school. Instead what I did was take a picture of the ceiling box and ask ChatGPT to just tell me the answers.

Voilà:

It seems almost trite at this point to talk about the virtues of AI. But over the last few months, I have found that — just like that — it has become an integral part of my everyday workflow.

This is true whether I'm playing electrician, planning travel, writing a blog post (and I want an assistant to find me data), or I'm looking to brainstorm around something business related.

I'm sure the same is true for many of you as well.

I have a new not-so-serious goal. I say not-so-serious because I'm busy with lots of other things and who knows if/when I'll actually get around to this. So let's just say that this goal is based on a strong interest. I would like to visit the 10 largest urban areas in the world.

I was careful to say urban areas, because largest cities can be misleading. City proper boundaries are an arbitrary measure. What matters more are the built up areas.

I have already been to a handful of them, namely the ones centered around Tokyo, Dhaka, and Mexico City. But there are more on the list that I haven't been to.

There are, however, two immediate challenges with setting a not-so-serious goal like this one. The first is that it's not easy to come up with a definitive list of the largest urban areas. It's nuanced and, for some cities, population estimates are very much rough estimates.

The second is that population figures are constantly changing. So by the time I get around to this, many of the largest cities might be in Africa (current forecast for this century) and I may be checking off the wrong list.

But let's not let perfect be the enemy of good. Here's what I came up with. And by "what I came up with," I mean that I asked ChatGPT its opinion. This is the list I got:

Then I asked the question in a slightly different way and got this list:

Then I asked it to tell me its definition of metropolitan area vs. urban agglomeration:

Finally, I asked it why Lagos, Nigeria was not on the list. Current estimates place this urban region at more than 20 million people (which would place it ahead of New York in the first list), but I don't think anyone really knows for sure. Whatever the current number, it is widely understood to be one of the fastest growing city regions in the world. This is how ChatGPT responded:

I'm a little torn because high on my list of cities to visit are São Paulo and Seoul. And they don't seem to be finding themselves on the same list. I'm also very curious to see Lagos, and I have a suspicion that it's much larger than official estimates. Regardless, there are some clearly big cities to check off. India and China would be good places to start. So I better get to work. Or not. Since this is a not-so-serious goal.

The first time I ever used dial-up internet was sometime in the 1990s. Some of you will remember that a company called CompuServe used to mail out floppy disks with "10 free hours." And I still remember the feeling of amazement the first time I tried it. Suddenly, I could chat with people from around the world. Remember a/s/l? It was so enthralling that those 10 free hours certainly didn't last very long.

Fast forward to more recent times, and I got that exact same feeling of amazement when I started diving into crypto. The first time I created a wallet, logged into to a service (using only the wallet), and then transferred funds around, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a fundamental shift in how the world works." A lightbulb went off. And I still feel this way about crypto, which is why I remain long ETH.

But now I'm also excited about AI (along with the rest of the world). With every new model release, it gets that much more impressive. Last week I wrote about Gemini 3 and, since then, I decided to cancel my ChatGPT subscription and move all my activity over to it. I'm sure that a better model will get released before we know it, but for right now I'm having a lot of fun creating just about everything.

Here's a cartoon isometric of Toronto that I prompted to include "landmarks" and the day's weather.

Here's a photo of a woman standing in the middle of a street in Tokyo wearing a trench coat and holding an umbrella. My prompt also asked it to make it look like a "grainy digital photo."

And here's a knolling shot (new word I just learned) featuring the gear of a global citizen (or globizen if you will). I prompted each of the objects, down to the white panel on the Blue Jays hat.

It's not perfect. Text remains an issue. If you look closely at the front of the passports or the text on the Fujifilm camera, you'll see that it's AI. But it's only a matter of time before this goes away. These kinds of images used to require a lot of time and effort. Now I can create them with one hand on my phone while I'm eating a bowl of cereal and having a morning coffee. There's zero marginal cost.

Thank goodness I've got more than 10 hours of usage.

Google is well aware that traditional search is going to die (or at least go away for the vast majority of use cases). I don't want to search for things if I can just be told the answer.

Here's an example. I was installing new light fixtures in our bedrooms this week and I wanted a refresher on wire colors.

Historically, I would have done a Google Search, which would have then led me to some website or to some lengthy YouTube video that I didn't actually want to watch and that I would have had to scan through to find the salient parts.

But today that feels old school. Instead what I did was take a picture of the ceiling box and ask ChatGPT to just tell me the answers.

Voilà:

It seems almost trite at this point to talk about the virtues of AI. But over the last few months, I have found that — just like that — it has become an integral part of my everyday workflow.

This is true whether I'm playing electrician, planning travel, writing a blog post (and I want an assistant to find me data), or I'm looking to brainstorm around something business related.

I'm sure the same is true for many of you as well.

I have a new not-so-serious goal. I say not-so-serious because I'm busy with lots of other things and who knows if/when I'll actually get around to this. So let's just say that this goal is based on a strong interest. I would like to visit the 10 largest urban areas in the world.

I was careful to say urban areas, because largest cities can be misleading. City proper boundaries are an arbitrary measure. What matters more are the built up areas.

I have already been to a handful of them, namely the ones centered around Tokyo, Dhaka, and Mexico City. But there are more on the list that I haven't been to.

There are, however, two immediate challenges with setting a not-so-serious goal like this one. The first is that it's not easy to come up with a definitive list of the largest urban areas. It's nuanced and, for some cities, population estimates are very much rough estimates.

The second is that population figures are constantly changing. So by the time I get around to this, many of the largest cities might be in Africa (current forecast for this century) and I may be checking off the wrong list.

But let's not let perfect be the enemy of good. Here's what I came up with. And by "what I came up with," I mean that I asked ChatGPT its opinion. This is the list I got:

Then I asked the question in a slightly different way and got this list:

Then I asked it to tell me its definition of metropolitan area vs. urban agglomeration:

Finally, I asked it why Lagos, Nigeria was not on the list. Current estimates place this urban region at more than 20 million people (which would place it ahead of New York in the first list), but I don't think anyone really knows for sure. Whatever the current number, it is widely understood to be one of the fastest growing city regions in the world. This is how ChatGPT responded:

I'm a little torn because high on my list of cities to visit are São Paulo and Seoul. And they don't seem to be finding themselves on the same list. I'm also very curious to see Lagos, and I have a suspicion that it's much larger than official estimates. Regardless, there are some clearly big cities to check off. India and China would be good places to start. So I better get to work. Or not. Since this is a not-so-serious goal.