Moved back to Ghost again because it's paid up for a year and I didn't want the blog to disappear. I'm taking an extended break. I've realized that part of my problem is trying to push through things when I should just be putting them aside. I'm still processing some very big life stuff and I don't have the energy for this right now. It's time to acknowledge that and put it aside until/if I do have the energy in the future.
234 North
Two days of decent weather incoming for Chicagoland. The humidity has been merciless this summer. Thankfully we’ve been spared the terrible heat aside from a few short bursts but the humidity is worse. It’s terrible for my breathing and as I get older I’m getting more and more sensitive to it. Hoping that the backbone of Summer has broken.
The X-E5 has been sent back. A lesson in there somewhere about ignoring hype.
Love em or hate em the page analytics I’ve got show that the best performing posts on this site are the ones that are argumentative or talk about AI. 😏
a very smart take from Semafor’s Reed Albergotti on Google:
Whoever stands atop the AI race podium isn’t the main point anymore. The contest is now about using AI to accomplish real world tasks. And for that, the benchmark is simple: Does it work and what did it cost?
There has been a lot of hand-wringing in the tech news space about Demis Hassabis not being the CEO of DeepMind and what it means for Gemini but I think Albergotti has it right that it doesn’t make a difference if Gemini ever is “on top” again.
Albergotti:
The tools will start to feel a little bit magical, especially for people who haven’t been experimenting with coding agents. But the underlying models powering those features will not be state of the art, and none of the people using the features will care about that, because they will work.
Google won’t be using the top models for all of that because using the most powerful AI would be astronomically expensive, and there probably isn’t enough compute power in the world to handle it.
The “top models” don’t make a difference for everyday business or personal use and they are never the defaults anyhow.
Google has billions of users who will find some value in these tools and get real work done with them. Whether Gemini can build some game demo that titillates the likes of Matt Shumer is irrelevant. Gemini integration with all of Google’s services will help keep bringing the money in and at the end of the day that’s all that matters for Google.
On the other side of the AI coin posts like this one from Alan Jacobs:
When I see any AI make any progress on the amelioration (not even the cure) of any disease, I’ll treat this as something other than the sales pitch of a con man. Not until. And I think that should be everyone’s attitude.
First of all his name is Demis Hassabis, not Demis Hassanis. One would think that a…checks…”Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University, and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia” could at least get the name right.
Demis Hassabis has a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold2 so arguably he’s already helped make the progress that Jacobs speaks of.
As I wrote the other day, there is a psychosis around AI topics and people are so ill that they are unable to speak coherently.
As an aside, for those of a certain age who remember Bullfrog Productions (Populous anyone?)…Hassabis worked there as a lead developer with Peter Molyneux on their game Theme Park.
Dave Winer constantly praising, yes praising, Claude really makes me want to steer clear of anything he does.
Journalism only sees the threat. This change is on the level of curing cancer. We may have thought it might be possible someday to do what we're doing now, so amazing that as you watch Claude make it happen you get goosebumps and can't help but laugh out loud.
Claude, as we're finishing a project: "The diving is what makes it a test of the network, not just the file: it doesn't take the feed's word for anything, it goes and knocks on every door the feed points to."
Dave + Claude is far more powerful than either on their own.
It’s disturbing.
Each Winter, prodded by the promise of warm weather to come, and the seemingly endless number of seed catalogs that show up in the mail, I get ready to plant a garden like nobody has seen. Oh the number of vegetables I’ll plant, and by seed no less! Forget the stuff at the garden center.
Each Spring, prodded by the promise of warm weather to come, many lists of “books you should read this summer”, and good old-fashioned optimism, I keep buying books. This year I’ll get to the pile I tell myself!
The gardening? Tempered by reality I forget how much effort gardening actually takes. Starting seeds indoors can be a challenge, not one for the faint of heart. So each Spring I forget the catalogs of seeds and make up my mind that this time I’m going to just head to the garden center but next Spring and Summer it will be different. Even in that context gardening is hard work. Planting. Pruning. Watering. Watching the wildlife destroy what I’ve spent so many hours tending. I don’t end up with much and apparently never learn a lesson to temper my expectations.
And the reading? Held back by my seeming inability to concentrate on anything at all for more than 2 minutes at a time these days, come Summer I look at the pile, shake my head, and pick up my computer or phone for a quick hit that doesn’t take much brain power. All of those books purchased on the promise of Summer? Haven’t read a single one.