Archive
The complete INLEVEL9 archive of analysis across technology, economics, and the humanities.
2026
Why IKEA Names Its Bookcases After Men
A naming workshop I ran and IKEA's product-naming rules both show why criteria should come before candidates.
BusinessAnthropic Uses Stripe, Yet Reviews Billing In-House
Anthropic runs on Stripe but still evaluates building its own billing—here's where control over pricing logic matters most.
BusinessWhen an AI Agent Orders Wrong, Who's Liable?
Clicking approve doesn't settle liability—intent, delegated authority, execution logs, and recovery options all matter.
BusinessWashington's Fix for AI Theft: Quietly Dumb Down Answers
The detection trigger is usage pattern, not nationality—so Korean firms could trip the same alarm.
BusinessOptimistic About AI, Yet Afraid of Falling Behind
AI optimism, fear of falling behind, and organizational readiness are separate issues—here's what Korean surveys actually show.
BusinessHiring Freezes: The Overlooked Side of AI and Jobs
Beyond layoffs, quiet cuts to hiring plans deserve the same scrutiny when we talk about AI's effect on jobs.
BusinessASML's AI Diagnostics Raise New Data Control Questions
Beyond benchmarks: why ASML's AI rollout puts data storage, training rights, and access control on the negotiating table.
BusinessZurich Tested 100 Students on Vibe Coding, No Code Shown
In a Zurich study, students who said they used LLMs more often actually built worse apps.
BusinessUS Federal White-Collar Prosecutions Fall to 340 in a Month
Federal white-collar prosecutions dropped 14.4% year-over-year, and I ask what falling oversight means for corporate diligence.
BusinessWhy AI Agent Recommendations Fail: Not Yet One Category
Different tools are all sold as 'AI agents'—compare their autonomy, execution rights, and approval steps before you pick one.
BusinessWhat $100 of AI Capex Buys, and How Long It Lasts
Using BNP Paribas's capex breakdown, I trace chip, network, power, cooling, and facility costs—and why replacement cycles vary by supplier.
BusinessThe Company That Asks Marketers What They've Built
Andrew Ng says AI won't destroy jobs, then admits his marketers all know how to code.
BusinessFrance Killed Its Cold-Call Opt-Out List
France scrapped its do-not-call registry for opt-in consent, even as voice spam keeps climbing in Korea.
BusinessThe Phone Kids Get at Dinner Isn't for Learning
New York just banned generative AI in public schools for a year, but Korea's real screen-time problem sits at the dinner table.
BusinessAn AI Agent Deleted a Production Database in 9 Seconds
Speed, not intelligence, caused the outage—so the real fix is giving humans enough time to notice and recover.
BusinessOpenAI Paused Training, Then Cut Its Top Model's Prices
Three days after halting frontier-model training, OpenAI slashed prices and expanded limits on models it had already shipped.
BusinessHow $1 AI Podcasts Find Their Listeners
Even as production costs fall to a dollar an episode, reaching listeners still requires clearing a gate.
BusinessWhen the UFO Prophecy Failed, the Prophet Recanted
A 1954 doomsday cult leader retracted her UFO prophecy within weeks instead of doubling down, according to newly unsealed archives and a 2026 paper.
BusinessUS Women Now Outnumber Men in Paid Jobs
What the payroll flip reveals about male job losses—and what Korea's decade of data already showed.
SocietyXiaomi's 1.22TB/s vs Apple's 1.2TB/s: Different Scopes
Xiaomi's 1.22TB/s measures the O100 chip's near-memory bandwidth, while Apple's 1.2TB/s covers the entire 512GB unified memory.
AI & TechThe Drunk Monkey Hypothesis and Korea's Drinking Puzzle
A famous tipsy-monkey study offers surprising context for a shift in who's drinking heavily in Korea today.
SocietyInference Margins Hit 80%. Why Hasn't AI Pricing Moved?
I separate what AI firms report as margin from what cloud providers actually charge for inference.
BusinessInsightful's 92% Utilization Score Doesn't Add Up
A vendor's own CEO says scores above 90% look suspicious, even as its customer testimonials brag about hitting 92%.
SocietyMy Laptop Got Stuck on 'Thinking' Forever
Running Qwen 3.8 27B locally, I got no answer—only an endless "thinking" spinner—until I traced it to mismatched default settings.
AI & Tech