We’ve normalized burning through compute like it’s free. It’s not. My MacBook battery used to last all day. Now it’s dead by lunch. And I think we’re all part of why.
This started right after upgrading to macOS Tahoe. At first I thought I had a hardware problem. Turns out the problem is the software itself. The new “liquid glass” design looks beautiful in marketing photos. On an actual screen, it’s a nightmare to read and apparently costs enough GPU cycles that my laptop gets warm just navigating folders.
Most organizations preparing for AI Act compliance are missing something fundamental: they don’t have anyone who actually understands machine learning on their governance teams. This isn’t an oversight. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.
GDPR required understanding data flows, implementing consent mechanisms, and ensuring proper security. It was genuinely complex, and organizations hired data protection officers and privacy engineers to handle it.
But GDPR’s complexity was manageable because it dealt with processes: where data goes, who accesses it, how long you keep it. These are things professionals can map and control.
The AI Act requires understanding algorithms themselves. When it asks about “robustness against adversarial examples,” it’s not asking about process, it’s asking about algorithmic properties of your model. When it requires “appropriate accuracy metrics,” it’s not asking for a percentage, it’s asking for stratified performance analysis across different populations, confidence intervals, and calibration metrics.
You can’t Google your way through these Machine Learning technical terms. You need people who understand the math.
I remember back in 1999 I got to try a speech recognition software for the first time. It required a training phase where I had to read paragraphs and paragraphs of text out loud so it could “pattern match” my voice. I was excited enough so I did the chore and waited for the moment of truth. I was about to experience magic, I was about to use “AI” for the first time.
Spoiler alert, it didn’t last for more than 10 minutes, I had a couple of “wow” moments but then ditched it and never looked at it again.
Why?
Because it was good as something novel but not good enough to be part of my life.