Front Burner Is AI making you dumb?
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Apr 1, 2026 Alex Panetta, journalist turned AI researcher, describes building a personal local LLM and automating daily AI briefings. He talks about practical projects like a math app for his daughter and a no-code market dashboard. They debate cognitive effects, MIT and Wharton studies on reduced recall and trust, and when to add friction to protect learning while still using AI.
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Personal Living Library With A Local LLM
- Alex Panetta is building a personal "living library" by saving transcripts, notes, and texts to query with a local LLM.
- He uses it to pull citations, analogies, or generate targeted slides drawn only from his own archived material.
Automated Morning Tip Sheet For Canada News
- Alex automated a daily AI-powered briefing that scrapes public notices and research and translates hacker talk into plain bullet points.
- He uses retrieval augmented generation to surface Canada-relevant mentions across hundreds of sources into a morning tip sheet.
AI Powered Personalized Learning For His Daughter
- Alex built hyper-personalized learning games for his daughter using AI to adjust difficulty and themes like heroes and villains.
- He tweaks the app weekly so it adapts to her progress while keeping reading and drawing as core daily habits.
