Colossus, Part 3: Generative AI is neat
Once again I am not writing the Colossus post I thought I was going to (yet). As I started to write up the work I’ve done to make my local models useful, I realized that a lot of it depends on an intuition about generative AI that I only loosely had myself, and that many…
Colossus, Part 2: Recess
It’s been a couple of months since I got Colossus up and running (see that story here) with three remarkably capable models all in the 20B parameter range (Qwen, Gemma and Mistral). Since then (not counting my super-awesome vacation), I’ve been working to build out the infrastructure to make the system useful for work beyond…
Colossus, Part One
One of my mantras has always been that details matter. Few things crank me up quicker than folks saying they want to “stay above the details” or “deal with the big picture.” Yes a broad view matters too — but unless you understand the specifics, you’re inevitably going to do something really dumb or, more…
Roadtrip Companion
TLDR: Check out my cool roadtrip app; it’s perfect for a Memorial Day road trip! A truism of the startup world is that there are no new ideas; everything you have ever thought of has been tried before. If you’re lucky, your timing is right, or you’ve figured out that one insight that gets it…
The Right Tool for the Job
I hate calling folks to fix stuff at the house. I’m kind of an introvert, and having people hanging around just puts me on edge. But more than that, it seems like I ought to be able to do these things myself. And often I can, albeit with an extra trip or ten to the…
Adventures in 3D Design: FreeCAD
3D printing is key to an abundant world. We use a lot of stuff. And until now, the most efficient way for the most people to have the most stuff has been to specialize — big, centralized factories custom-tooled to build a whole bunch of whatever (potato chips, cars, iPhones, toilet paper) and ship it…
Not Good at That
Folks often seem surprised to hear I didn’t get a Computer Science degree. Back in the late 80s, CS was still considered (at least at my school) mostly a math discipline and, despite apparent expectations, I am decidedly not a fan of advanced math. I handled this by combining two things I do love (CS…
Turtles all the way down
Every business is a process shop — a tangled mess of human and automated activities that work together to produce something folks are willing to pay for. And even as AI starts to handle specific jobs and tasks, that inherent complexity doesn’t go away. Enterprise software is the glue that keeps the machine running, and…
Quick thoughts on verifying AI content
I really just meant this to be a response to Scott on LinkedIn, but both as a comment and an update they said it was too long. I thought they were all about keeping content on their own site? Seems self-defeating. Ah well. My old friend Scott Porad asked a really good question about my…
“Doing my own research”
To be clear, the title here is tongue-in-cheek. Real “research” involves carefully-designed and bias-controlled experiments, and there ain’t none of that below. My intended point is just that we’re all capable of digging deeper in ways that haven’t been the case before the advent of LLMs. Arming yourself with these tools is one way to…
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