Ron Burk
5.8K posts
@ronburk
Working away on The Pop Psychology of Programming. Likes and retweets are how I use Twitter to keep notes.
What if your next yoga mat was your last? The PRO™ Yoga Mat is engineered for decades of practice with ultra-dense support, joint protection, and a lifetime guarantee.
It’s clear to me that AI adoption in knowledge work will be slow, because it's mentally exhausting for humans to use, and because it radically distorts existing knowledge workflows, massively accelerating some tasks while slowing others, creating inevitable bottlenecks, that force a fundamental re-engineering of the workflow. Re-engineering workflows is obviously possible, but time-consuming. More importantly, this re-engineering isn't a one-time thing. The need seems to repeat every 3–6 months. The models change, but so do best practices, from early prompt engineering to managing autonomous agents. Each shift requires workers to relearn failure points, and mentally recalibrate to changes in reliability. Business workflows can't adapt at this pace. Workers can't fundamentally redesign what they're doing every few months. Therefore, adoption will be slow.
Today is a very good day for the world. Fingers crossed that Iran chooses wisely.
Physics is reversible. Computation is not. Is the arrow of time a property of the universe or the mind?
I'm an AI-is-a-useful-tool person, but judging by @Amazon, which has gone full AI and is pressuring its engineers to use more, it might be best for some companies to avoid AI entirely. They are proving that AI is actively destructive unless paired with a solid engineering culture that imposes proper guardrails. The LLM Amazon has let loose on what was once an industry-leading app is systematically destroying it, and the pace of enshitification is accelerating in proportion to their AI use. Both the store and the video apps (in multiple browsers on MacOS and on WebOS) are turning to garbage, and the backend is degrading. The video player fails randomly; playback options disappear and then reappear when you reboot the app; videos shown in the catalog are flagged as unavailable when you try to watch them. The storefront app is also failing: product images don't display, load times are occasionally in minutes. I could go on. To add insult to injury, they just announced a rate hike. This kind of stuff would bring most companies down, and it will bring them down if they don't reverse the trend. Frankly, I think that problem is not AI per se—I think LLMs are a useful tool. Amazon has always been a high-stress sweatshop, and AI is amplifying its worst impulses. Mindlessly forcing engineers to use AI inappropriately while chasing the chimera of "productivity" is not working. You are not more productive if your app is turning to crap as you work on it. Don't fall into the same trap. Sure, use AI, but use it carefully and with intention.
Democrat politicians are now stuck defending two very unpopular issues. The defunding of DHS, and the opposition to voter id. I'm not sure how they get out of this hotbox unscathed.
Something I've learned the hard way is that a 2x4 isn't actually 2 inches by 4 inches. It used to be, but not anymore because of course.
I genuinely do not believe that AI can make me a better writer. Not in the drafting, not in the editing, not in the conceiving or brainstorming, none of it. I crave human reviewers and editors. I embrace the virtue of doing things "inefficiently."
Nobody tells you this: Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug. It’s the dopamine from reading, planning, or learning, but never doing. Stop looking for more information and start acting on the information you already have. Get your dopamine from action.
