There I was, walking and talking—something becoming more and more normal for me these days.
I might be talking to another human being, if I’m on a call. Whenever I’m on a 30 minute trail walk, I always want to have my hands free so that I can just walk and talk. Headphones are perfect for this.
Rather than a human being, though, I’m finding myself using my voice to do some research with AI. Lately, ChatGPT and Gemini have been my go-to voice modes of choice, but frequent users differ in what they appreciate and enjoy1.
Deep in thought, I was contemplating the connection between information and energy first made evident by Maxwell’s Demon, and wanted a good sounding board. Actually, maybe “cognitive mirror” is a better term, because I wanted to hear my ideas reflected back to me, and I wanted to look things up on the fly. Voice AI is, to my mind, perhaps a dozen times better than a traditional search for a multiplicity of reasons I’m happy to get into some other time2.
I pointed out that the energy our brains use has a real cost, and the AI pointed out that our brains use about 20% of our body’s energy, even though they only take up about 2% of our body’s weight. I wondered aloud if that implied humans were inefficient, and after some brief reflection, the conversation turned to whether some real-world examples might be useful.
After considering some of the ways in which information is processed, I noted that all of them required adding additional energy in to maintain the system. This could be due to something seemingly mild like data degradation over time, or simply because the heat produced from all that “thinking” that can cause your equipment to literally melt.
I continue to be intrigued by the undeniable connection between information and energy, and I wonder if one is the same thing as the other, but manifesting in ways our primitive ape brains can’t quite grasp yet. That’s how the connection between lightning and electricity used to be, and it’s also how electricity and magnetism once were.
It seemed inconceivable to imagine that apples fell to the ground for the same reason that the Moon went around the Earth, but that’s what Newton did, and Einstein showed that space and time were part of the same fabric. Why couldn’t information and energy be connected in that same way?
I was into this. Like, really into this! I was thinking about the universe in crazy ways, and I was using my voice to search and reflect my ideas.
Then, I was interrupted by my neighbor.
I had a little banter with him, and he introduced me to his dad. My AI friend recorded and transcribed that conversation, but I’ve decided to keep it private—just between me, the NSA, and whoever else is on today’s Signal chat.
I thought it was noteworthy that it occurred to me that I had been interrupted—by a human. Like, how long ago would it have seemed like an interruption to hear from your phone in the middle of a real-time conversation with someone? And yet, here we are.
Being annoyed by a human interrupting me from a conversation with an AI is very, very 2025.
If you’re interested in learning about what’s the current state of the art, check out
’s , and join me in trying to interpret this nonstop firehose of AI news. Also, read the comments! I’m there with you.
Ironic that I interupted an e-mail to check out a essay titled interupted because it caught my eye.