AI

There are 10 posts filed in AI (this is page 1 of 1).

Starting my exploration of AI

Now that I am retired, I am taking some time to explore AI tools, specifically Claude from Anthropic. In my previous job, I used Google Gemini for answering questions on tool setup/options, or creating short one-off scripts for repetitive tasks. However, these were all performed using ad-hoc prompts, and I wanted to learn how to use CLIs to create things.

I signed up for a Claude Pro subscription, and started a free course called Claude Code for Everyone (created by Carl Vellotti). The first module was an overview of how Claude can analyze files, extract and summarize data, and several other features. The second module was a first step at “vibe coding” – creating an online quiz. Claude created the code, added a repo to my Github account, then deployed it to Vercel (see the quiz here). In many ways, this is a contrived example, but a good way to get my feet wet with this kind of tool. Now I need to think of some apps to create!

Followup on the future of AI

Yesterday, Om Malik summarized some feedback on the Matt Shumer post that I linked to yesterday.

This whole drama, from the viral post to the takedowns to the counter-takes, none of it is really about Shumer’s essay. What it’s about is simpler. And harder to admit. In the words of screenwriter William Goldman, “Nobody knows anything.” 

Shumer writes his breathless warning. Marcus writes his skeptical rebuttal. Kahn points out the flawed assumptions. Goldman notes the difficulty of separating signal from hype. And every one of them is also selling something. A book. A newsletter. A reputation. An audience.

Hmmm…sounds like we are all “on our own”….

The future of AI

Via Matt Mullenweg, a link to a long post by Matt Shumer talking about how capable the latest AI models/tools have become, and that people should start using these tools to get ahead of the upcoming changes. I have thought about this as well, but have not taken any action yet.

Interestingly, The Atlantic has just published an article titled “America Isn’t Ready for What AI Will Do To Jobs” (might be paywalled). I read through this article as well, it raises concerns about big companies slashing workforces as AI does more and more. This theme is touched on in the Matt Shumer post.

Finally, Bernie Sanders published a position paper in the fall of 2025 on AI impact on workers. Again, the outlook was negative.

What should people do? What, if anything, should be done about AI, from the regulation standpoint? I don’t know.

Tracy Durnell: Recursive human thought – “How much will replacing the thinking work of writing with generating content dull and slow progression of ideas?“

My thoughts on the current AI explosion

For some time now, people have been exploring public AI models like DALL-E and GPT-3/GPT-4. From the software development standpoint, it appears that with the correct prompts, these models can generate source code that can do 80-90% of what you want (for specific tasks). Simon Willison has a great walkthrough of one of his experiments. Another area is training models on your own data. Dave Winer is working with Chat Thing to create his own personal chatbot which can answer questions about the content he has published since 1994 (Ton Ziljstra has shared some thoughts on this topic). I don’t think that these types of applications will be replacing programmers just yet, but they are already helping programmers be more productive. The uptick of people using these apps to create content is somewhat troubling, I would say the “jury is still out” on those types of use cases.

I posted a question on Dave Winer’s chatbot about fat pages, got a decent response!

Frank McPherson would like a personal search engine for his writing rather than an AI. I don’t think I have enough online writing to make use of an AI of my writing.