jefffoster

AI is an expert in everything you are not.

I did a PhD in the late 90s.

What was the motivation? Honestly, I was too lazy to get a job and staying in academia for another 3+ years seemed amazing (probably not recommended, but it worked out OK for me).

What helped get me through it:

1) Doing something I genuinely enjoyed - I approached the Computer Vision professor who gave me some ideas. I super enjoy writing code, and the idea of processing gigabytes of video to produce answers seemed cool. I treated it as a super difficult programming project.

2) Breaking my leg - Just before starting, I broke my leg badly. And that meant working from home with a weekly visit from the professor with a stack of reading papers. That time spent understanding state of the art was super useful.

3) Funding - At some point, DARPA gave enough money for me not to worry about funding, so I never had to work a job or get distracted.

4) Marriage - The final straight of writing a thesis was tough and I was super lucky to have a supportive wife who pushed me to get-shit-done.

I remember attending a tech event at MSR Cambridge, and a speaker made some disparaging comment about older developers not being able to keep up in this modern world of programming.

An older gentleman stood up and politely mentioned they knew a thing or two.

That was Tony Hoare.

At a guess an Enterprise API account. Pay per token but no limits.

It’s very easy to spend $100s per dev per day.

It’s not only the low obesity rates, the article states it suppresses impulsiveness.

Does anyone have any intuition about the how reasoning improves based on the strength of the underlying model?

I’m wondering whether this seemingly underwhelming bump on 4o magnifies when/if reasoning is added.

A great quote that’s stuck with me is that “LLMs are experts in subjects you are not”

Interestingly they used to attach a sponge to the end. You might think that was because it doesn’t break the glass, but really it was to ensure the nearby houses don’t get woken up for free!

Not just cost reduction but allowing more investment. A good architecture can enable more people to work on your product.

This is an absolutely fantastic book!

Read it to learn how to program, learn a bit about AI as an added benefit.

Once upon a time I found string interning useful in conjunction with IdentityHashMap for quick lookup of lots of strings.

There's also a positive framing for the sunk cost fallacy.

Invest your money in something (e.g. exercise equipment) and you'll be more willing to spend time using it.