-
Why You Need a Thinking Partner (like this Genius)
You may not have heard of him, but James Clerk Maxwell wrote down what we now think of as four equations that define ALL of electromagnetics. You can get a T-Shirt with them emblazoned on it. If you want to know how radio waves propagate, or how a radio functions, or how anything running on electricity…
-
A change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points
We’ve all done it–struggled over some problem until a frustrating end of the day. But after “sleeping on it” and stepping into a hot shower, a breakthrough idea pops up, as if out of nowhere. This often comes from getting too close to the problem. A little distance can make a decisive difference. The quotation…
-
How to think about AI: The Economic Model
Arguably, present AI systems as well as those on the horizon don’t fundamentally offer new capabilities. They make easier things that could eventually get done by a human–or larger group of humans. (If you have counter-examples, please leave them in the comments below). For example, a code-completion LLM like Github Copilot does what an new-grad…
-
Explaining Chatbot AI “Temperature” (and Why It’s Terribly Named)
I’ve seen a few people ask about the “temperature” setting seen in some generative AI apps. Here’s the scoop. Please share this with any confused souls. First of all, know that the term “temperature” comes from the world of AI, not from from a particular app. Which frees me to say that it’s terribly named.…
-
Introducing the Game-Changing StudioExec-GPT 3000
After literally minutes of work, I’m proud to announce the release of StudioExec-GPT 3000. This revolutionary product can perform every major function of a movie or television executive, at a fraction of the cost. Keep reading to hear about special discounts for members of the Hollywood Writer’s Guild and their agents. This product autonomously performs…
-
Guidelines for composing a second brain…and a few surprising recommendations
You need a second brain to avoid information overload. But what goes into composing that system may not be what you think.
-
Introduction to Semantic Search with Rockset: From Keyword to Vector Search
A nice article I helped the amazing Rockset team write. Unlike many other introductions to vector concepts, this one goes a bit deeper into the why and how it works. This is a database worth keeping an eye on. Also take note of the AI-generated author portrait. 🙂 This posting, and the full text of…
-
Generative AI is a Dirty Rotten Blatherskite
I’ve long appreciated the aphorism: Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you’re as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? Much the same goes for using a generative AI. It’s like that one uncle everyone…
-
Generative AI and the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect
Author Michael Chrichton coined the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect in a 2002 speech. Paraphrasing: ‘The effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is…
-
Learning to Think
A bit more on my educational history. It made me imagine that I hated math. I took zero math-related classes my senior year of high school. I had all the necessary credits to graduate, and the way the subject was taught was so painful that I couldn’t stomach another minute of it, even though I…