Design in the Era of the Algorithm | Big Medium

Benjamin Parry~ Writing ~ Marking the homework of a twelve year old ~ @benjaminparry

Don’t get me wrong, there are some features under the mislabeled bracket of AI that have made a huge impact and improvement to my process. Audio transcription has been an absolute game-changer to research analysis, reimbursing me hours of time to focus on the deep thinking work. This is a perfect example of a problem seeking a solution, not the other way around. The latest wave of features feel a lot like because we can rather than we should, because.

Squish Meets Structure: Designing with Language Models

The slides and transcript from a great talk by Maggie Appleton, including this perfect description of the vibes we get from large language models:

It feels like they’re either geniuses playing dumb or dumb machines playing genius, but we don’t know which.

LukeW | Ask LukeW: New Ways into Web Content

I like how Luke is using a large language model to make a chat interface for his own content.

This is the exact opposite of how grifters are selling the benefits of machine learning (“Generate copious amounts of new content instantly!”) and instead builds on over twenty years of thoughtful human-made writing.

ongoing by Tim Bray · The LLM Problem

It doesn’t bother me much that bleeding-edge ML technology sometimes gets things wrong. It bothers me a lot when it gives no warnings, cites no sources, and provides no confidence interval.

Yes! Like I said:

Expose the wires. Show the workings-out.

Open Lecture at CIID: “Keeping up with the Kardashevians” – Petafloptimism

A terrfic presentation from Matt Jones (with the best talk title ever). Pace layers, seamful design, solarpunk, and more.