Recently, I've been thinking a lot about scaffolding and languages for managing systems of LLMs coordinating with each other — new programming languages might be the ideal solution for this area.
This is a blog post for my recent paper on RL post-training of LLMs: introducing the Matthew Effect and proposing to solve it with Never Give Up. It is presented interactively and less formally, more like how I give the talk. For a deeper, more technical dive, check out the paper on arxiv and code on github. The…
"That's why I'm sending this message of urgency"
I can only speculate as to the reasons why I was laid off from Meta in May, but I suspect that one of the reasons is that I was a little bit more resistant to adopting AI/LLMs as coding tools than some of my peers. Don't get me wrong, I generated at least 90% of my code using AI in my last few months there, which was…
In 1623 the German Wilhelm Schickard produced the first known designs for a mechanical calculator. Twenty years later Blaise Pascal produced a machine of an improved design, aiming to help with the large amount of tedious arithmetic required in his role as a tax collector. The interest in mechanical calculation showed…
Here is a collection of screenshots (obfuscated) of dozens and dozens of online comments from many platforms (Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook) containing accusations or confusion that my artworks and comics are AI-generated. Despite creating every piece by hand, despite sharing timelapses, the comments keep…
Lately I’ve been asking myself: what might artificial intelligence be good for besides answering questions and writing code?
AI has a cost problem. The solution that will emerge will be simpler than we expect.
How generative AI exposes the gap between copyright law and everyday enforcement, from fan art and private creation to commercial competition.
There is an implicit contract at the foundation of every database architecture decision you have ever made. You probably never wrote it down. Nobody does. It just… existed.
While Claude Code and Codex have significantly accelerated the automation of software development, limitations in the context window of a…
c’mon, try doing a breakthrough
LLMs make good classifiers but even better features
I’ve forgotten how to write code, or at least I think I have. Hard to be sure, I haven’t done it for a while. But then, I start to muse…
Comparing token efficiency across 19 popular programming languages using RosettaCode data - from Clojure to C, there's a 2.6x difference.
Slop, Alienation, Deskilling, and Team Fallout
Dmitri's blog about programming, Clojure, and software development
“When life looks like Easy Street, there is danger at your door”— Grateful Dead, “Uncle John’s Band”
My Plasma task switcher was a second too slow, so I built - and shipped - my own in Zig, without actually knowing Zig, using AI tools.
KL-divergence is a topic which crops up in a ton of different places in information theory and machine learning, so it's important to understand well. Unfortunately, it has some properties which seem confusing at a first pass (e.g. it isn't symmetric like we would expect from most distance measures, and it can be…
AI coding is blurring the lines between engineers, PMs, and designers. In the short-term, it's going to cause havoc. What happens long-term?
LLMs will make more of your average stuff. And that's OK. Here's how average SQL beats fancy attribution models when your agent writes the queries.
My latest Locus column is "Reverse Centaurs," and it sets out to unravel a paradox: how is it that some AI's users describe their experience as a hellish ordeal, while others delight in the ways that AI is changing their lives for the better?
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David Gruber wants to know what sperm whales are saying. He thinks it might actually be possible.
Web developer and cybersecurity researcher
My wife and I have been looking for an app to track things like habits, hobbies, and when we last did certain chores.To be honest there are probably hundreds of different habit trackers on the App Store. Next to todo list apps they are supposed to be the easiest apps to create so it is not really that surprising there…
Tailwind is great. It's a quick way to style a webpage and offers incredible flexibility. The problem is, despite Tailwind being incredibly customisable I can instantly tell when a site is using Tailwind. It has a certain look and feel that is hard to shake. A few years ago this "look and feel" was fresh and classy…
Abel Jansma is a scientist studying emergence, higher-order interactions, information theory, and complex systems across biology and artificial intelligence.
The Pine Time is a $27 smart watch that runs open source firmware. I’ve had one sitting in the back of a drawer for a...
