What is PopAI?

PopAI — Popular Artificial Intelligence — is a newsletter about the most consequential technology of our time, written for the people it will affect most: everyone.

The AI conversation is too important to stay locked inside industry circles. The people building these systems talk to each other. The people whose lives will be reshaped by them get press releases and hype cycles. PopAI exists to close that gap.

Every Friday morning, the newsletter covers three things: what’s actually happening inside the AI industry and why it matters for the broader public, tools worth your time, and the cultural shifts — art, entertainment, ideas — that most coverage misses.

Standalone essays go deeper when the subject demands it. Some of these have interactive editions with diagrams, annotations, and visualizations at thbrdy.dev — structural arguments that can’t live in an email.

“Popular” means what it meant when Popular Mechanics and Popular Science chose it: for the public. Not dumbed down. Made accessible.

Free subscribers get the Friday newsletter — every week, no exceptions.

Paid subscribers ($7/month or $70/year) get everything: deep-dive essays, interactive editions, full archives, and comments.

Founding members ($300/year) support the independence of this work directly.

PopAI is written by Thomas Brady — former Green Beret turned AI researcher. More at thbrdy.dev.