Malaney

That's my boy!!

Sharing an interesting recent conversation on AI's impact on the economy. AI has been compared to various historical precedents: electricity, industrial revolution, etc., I think the strongest analogy is that of AI as a new computing paradigm (Software 2.0) because both are fundamentally about the automation of digital information processing. If you were to forecast the impact of computing on the job market in ~1980s, the most predictive feature of a task/job you'd look at is to what extent the algorithm of it is fixed, i.e. are you just mechanically transforming information according to rote, easy to specify rules (e.g. typing, bookkeeping, human calculators, etc.)? Back then, this was the class of programs that the computing capability of that era allowed us to write (by hand, manually). With AI now, we are able to write new programs that we could never hope to write by hand before. We do it by specifying objectives (e.g. classification accuracy, reward functions), and we search the program space via gradient descent to find neural networks that work well against that objective. This is my Software 2.0 blog post from a while ago. In this new programming paradigm then, the new most predictive feature to look at is verifiability. If a task/job is verifiable, then it is optimizable directly or via reinforcement learning, and a neural net can be trained to work extremely well. It's about to what extent an AI can "practice" something. The environment has to be resettable (you can start a new attempt), efficient (a lot attempts can be made), and rewardable (there is some automated process to reward any specific attempt that was made). The more a task/job is verifiable, the more amenable it is to automation in the new programming paradigm. If it is not verifiable, it has to fall out from neural net magic of generalization fingers crossed, or via weaker means like imitation. This is what's driving the "jagged" frontier of progress in LLMs. Tasks that are verifiable progress rapidly, including possibly beyond the ability of top experts (e.g. math, code, amount of time spent watching videos, anything that looks like puzzles with correct answers), while many others lag by comparison (creative, strategic, tasks that combine real-world knowledge, state, context and common sense). Software 1.0 easily automates what you can specify. Software 2.0 easily automates what you can verify.

Absolutely ...

@HaussernotC Ra6

White to move, mate in 2!

Terribly sad news to hear what this amazing Symfony contributor is facing. Definitely sending prayers and support to his family.

Rest in Power to one of the greatest to ever do it…. A selfless soul and responsible for some of the most important moments in the history of Black excellence in music as an artist, mentor, collaborator and giant…. Here are a few moments from his time in @blacktronika (cont)

Congratulations!!!

Pharaoh Sanders plays in an abandoned tunnel in #SanFrancisco, 1982 #pharoahsanders #jazzisdead

IdP's, Passkeys and Bears oh my!! Great podcast interview with #JameekaGreenAaron of @okta on the future of Identity and Access Management theverge.com/23850354/biome…

Lock in, Twin!!

The highly anticipated @WayneShorterDoc "Zero Gravity" drops on Wayne's birthday August 25th on @PrimeVideo

Let’s just alleviate any confusion about who can’t score from the outside. Jace may struggle but my boy @007aycash is niiice! #Swagger #SwaggerBallers

Not only was he a brilliant software developer, he was an open source advocate who donated the proceeds for his editor to charity in Uganda. RIP #brammoolenaar

If I owe my career in software development to one person, it is probably Bram Mooleanar, whose Vim text editor has been my go-to editor for nearly 30 years.

Starting to think Product Management will be overtaken by Product Engineering. Engineers are learning product. PMs aren’t learning how to build. Reminds me of “information architects” in the old days arguing that nobody understood how important they were. Then they disappeared.

Such a brilliant man and composer, RIH

Herbie Hancock’s birthday is on Wednesday. There will never be an explanation for how he accomplished this in just *4 years*: