The Age of Living Software
What if software doesn't have to be take-it-or-leave-it?
Anthropic Will Win Against DoD
Regarding what I wrote yesterday, this piece is an expert overview of the laws at stake and why DoD’s supply chain risk designation for Anthropic is doomed to fail. From the government's perspective, Claude does pose some concerning vendor reliability issues. But the specific actions Hegseth and
Anthropic doesn’t have to work for anyone, including the government
I’ve seen enough takes on the Anthropic/DoD conflict since it all went down last week, and I’m surprised at how often this important principle is being left out of the conversation: There are many freedoms enjoyed by Americans—and therefore American businesses. One of them is that
More Provo Street Photography
A fun morning wandering downtown Provo with some great people.
If AI companies were consumer tech from a decade ago
Late night noodling, but even in the light of day this still feels right to me. If we mapped current #AI companies to consumer tech from the 2010s: Anthropic = Apple. Focused on high quality for a smaller market. Stubborn and opinionated in annoying ways, but innovating in important ones. Sets
Why Love-Work Is Different Than Hate-Work
A great read, and not just because of how deeply I felt the distinction between love-work and hate-work. I also really enjoyed how Horton described research eras in psychology. All fields have this sort of thing, and knowing them helps make sense of how we got to our
AI verifiability, but compared to what?
Much of the advice around using AI is that if you use it, then you need to verify what it produces. This is presently good advice. But I'm doubtful it will be good advice in the long-run. Consider how little verification happens in large institutions by leaders
Professors Are Conservative, Actually
Politically, academics are much more liberal than the average person. But Paul Bloom makes the excellent point that, in areas related to their work, academics are actually deeply conservative. Asking a prof about AI is like asking a taxi driver to weigh in on Uber. I think I have good
An amazing story of courage and empathy
This is an incredible moment of courage that happened in 2023. I’d never heard about it until this article. Nathan saved dozens of lives. Nathan started to think of himself as being in the right place at the right time. His instinct was to get this man and his
Joshua Gans on Vibe Researching
From an economist, about his extensive experiments with AI-driven academic research. I don’t have much of a research background, but his experiences seem right where expected. My point is that the experiment — can we do research at high speed without much human input — was a failure. And it
A Rare-Blood Donor Saved Millions of Lives
Australia's most prolific blood and plasma donor, James Harrison, has died at age 88. Known as the "Man with the Golden Arm," Harrison is credited with saving the lives of 2.4 million babies over the course of more than half a century. Harrison died in
Some Provo Street Photography
Since my focus has been learning landscape photography, I've never really done any street shooting. Thanks to a kind invitation, I had a chance to head downtown and try my hand at it. (Thanks Daren, Jason, and Justin!) A bit of a grey day, and I need to