A stranger stopped me ten seconds after I walked off the stage with a second place trophy and offered to tell me what I'd done wrong. He may have been right. I'll never know.
Second Place
Category: AI & Communication
Estimating
There's a finding in AI research called emergent misalignment. Researchers took an aligned language model and fine-tuned it on one narrow thing: examples of insecure computer code. Bad code, nothing else. No malice anywhere in the training data. The model didn't just start writing bad code. It started giving harmful advice on subjects that had … Continue reading Estimating
What I Didn’t Say
In January of this year I used an AI tool to help me edit my novel. The chapter that came back wasn't mine. Same characters, different scene. Events I hadn't written, in a book I'd already spent a hundred and five thousand words on. I got about halfway down the page before I stopped and … Continue reading What I Didn’t Say
Why Is This Not Working?!
Not long ago I got into a technical conversation with a guy at work, and I was dead certain I was right. Certain he was being short-sighted. Certain he wasn't really hearing what I was saying. He wasn't hearing me. But not for the reason I assumed. I hadn't framed my thinking well enough for … Continue reading Why Is This Not Working?!
The Thing Became The Message
When I found Toastmasters I fell in love with it immediately. Not with speaking — with the machinery of speaking. Structure, delivery, the evaluation loop, the whole beautiful system of it. There was one problem, and it took me years to see it. I didn't have anything to say. So I did the natural thing. … Continue reading The Thing Became The Message
