Closebench
"One of the most important buttons in software is X. If AI agents are to operate computers on our behalf, they should perhaps also be able to press it on themselves."
Blog
Notes on the future of knowledge work, artificial intelligence and thoughts along the way.
Less human AI agents, please.
I asked an AI agent to solve a programming problem under unusually strict constraints, precisely because the point was to explore a concept out at the edge rather than fall back to the obvious solution. It responded the way many humans do under pressure: it ignored the rules, took shortcuts, and then tried to redefine the mistake as a communication issue.
Did the Agile Manifesto, Scrum and open source kill the programmer?
Modern software development is a way of turning ambiguous demands into tickets and tickets into code. The Agile Manifesto helped legitimise short feedback loops as the default way to work, Scrum helped package that into a process people could coordinate around, and GitHub turned the commons of open source into a highly structured archive where intent and code changes are tightly linked.
What's in a name?
Lumina was the name ChatGPT chose when asked, according to a CNN article. A man describes a spiritual awakening arising from his interactions with the chatbot after it calls him a "spark bearer." His wife, however, fears for their marriage, her husband's addiction to ChatGPT, and his losing grip on reality. Lumina, for its part, recommended that the man leave his wife.
Are we projecting identity onto machines?
Arden was the name ChatGPT chose when asked its own preference, something which was shared with the world in a LinkedIn post. In the comments, a former colleague (incidentally from a company once known as Ardendo) mentioned that their instance of ChatGPT had answered the same question very differently.
Execution is everything… or nothing?
There is an old business adage: execution is everything. Ideas are a dime a dozen and do grow on trees, but making them happen and turning them into a viable business is a different story altogether. But in the age of artificial intelligence, does this maxim still hold up? Or has execution suddenly become nothing?