Sleeves-Up AI

Impressions after mucking around code and communities.

Control Vectors as Sliders

Imagine a DJ mixing station for LLMs — dozens of rows of sliders and knobs to turn inputs like "professionalism" or "face-saving white lies" or "traditional family values" up or down. A technique called activation hacking (or representation engineering... or control vectors... it's a new thing) makes something like this viable.

By running contrasting sets of prompts (ex: happy vs sad, honest vs deceptive) on the same model, it’s possible to extract the differences between them as an adjustable modifier for future model outputs.

Very excited to experiment with this in the coming weeks.

Degen Spaces and Scenius

AI Reddit and Discord have a bit of that "crypto degen vibe" going for them right now. Something about the sheer indulgence of GPU splurges, downloading terabytes upon terabytes of models, and running make on questionable C++ code written by strangers on the internet.

Of course, I use "degen" in the most complimentary way possible. It's where the scenius is right now, just as it was once the "dirtbag" climbers at Camp 4, geeks in Building 20, and other sceniuses before it.

And it too shall pass, so be sure enjoy it while it's here.

“Reasoning Putty”

From a product engineering perspective, my new metaphor for current generation AI is “reasoning putty.” A flexible substance that can be shaped and applied liberally to previously slippery bits of software and workflows.

Putty is more flexible and adaptable than screws — but hardly a drop-in solution. It still takes significant engineering to get complex tasks done.

Good news is, this is a kind of engineering that's relatively accessible, and I fully expect many of the toy demos we played with last year to reemerge as actually valuable tools soon, as teams claw their way through the "2nd 90%" of their feature backlogs.

Progress Updates

Because ideas without accountability are just daydreams.

Memory Dividends

Rollout nearly complete. Didn't expect digital photo frames to have a viral coefficient to them, as relatives visit one other, notice the frames, and purchase their own.

It also makes gift-giving really easy, even if only for a single year.

Speculative Bets

Currently deep on the explore side of the explore <> exploit spectrum.

A seemingly unavoidable side-effect is that I feel uncharacteristically, perpetually behind schedule. The excitement of novel ideas and simple pleasure of finding things out... meets the hard constraints of 24 hours and biological needs.

And in the meantime, the ultimate goal is still to tranform novel discoveries into durable, practical value. Which still benefits from that nearly mutually exclusive substance — focus.

Maturity might be the ability to reconcile these contradictions with skillful grace.

The next best thing, though, is a manic obsession that compresses both exploration and focus into an unstable critical mass. Aiming for the former, but I'll settle for the latter. ¯\(ツ)/¯