Every question is a new search.
Each time you ask a question, the product goes back to the store, picks a few passages, and hands them to the model. This issue follows one question around...
Your document, as a list of numbers.
When a product "reads" your documents, it cuts them into pieces, turns each piece into a list of numbers, and keeps both. This issue explains what those...
What "delete" actually deletes.
You deleted the conversation. The product still knows what was in it. This issue is about where that knowledge lives, and why "delete" means something...
Where your draft actually goes.
You paste three paragraphs into a chat box to tidy the language. This is what happens to them — and the one setting that changes the answer. Where we've been...
It predicts the next word. That is the whole machine.
A new weekly strand starts here. The Primer explains how these systems actually work, from zero, for lawyers who will have to advise on them — and lands each...
No country is restricted. Your data still cannot leave.
Two new readers joined this desk on 30 August. You are starting at Issue 05 — the back catalogue is at buttondown.com/the_desk/archive, and Issues 02 to 04...
81 days to register. Who exactly receives the application?
TL;DR India now has two data-and-AI regimes running at once, and they fail in opposite directions. One has a named regulator with nobody in the chair. The...
No EU office? Article 50 still applies from 2 August
TL;DR Article 50 of the EU AI Act became applicable on 2 August 2026, and the Commission's own guidance confirms it reaches providers established outside the...
DPDP Alert: the Consent-Manager deadline is real
TL;DR India's nearer DPDP deadline is not May 2027 — it is 13 November 2026, roughly 100 days out, and it forces two decisions now. Meanwhile the EU's AI...