You cannot mandate AI transformations
Julie Zhuo on what it takes to actually roll out an AI transformation. It’s not just about efficiencies: you must redesign your org — its work and roles — around the new capabilities that have become possible. How do you do that? Step by step, starting with personal tasks you hate.
Tokens ≠ dollars
I don’t know anyone using tokens as a measure of AI productivity. But in our reductionist age, it’s easy to latch on to whatever metric we can translate into money. Tokens aren’t a good proxy for value. I disagree with this post’s claim that AI is closer to IT infrastructure (e.g., databases) than other metered utilities. But IMO we still lack good ROI proxies for AI.
Open-source A.I. in corporate America
Nvidia’s Hugging Face acquisition has cast open-weight models into the spotlight. The NY Times highlights how large American corporations (e.g., AT&T) are saving money by using them. Many cognitive tasks don’t need the latest greatest; I’ve been experimenting with Bonsai 27B, which works well in my 32GB MacBook Pro. The key is architecting workflows to use more expensive models for tasks that require higher levels of cognition. (NY Times gift link)
Agent memory as a file format
Agents need memory. How do you architect it? There are several possible answers, ranging from complex to very complex. But it needn’t be so. In this article, Cal Patterson proposes a simple format for agentic memories that consists of short Markdown files plus an optional vector index. This strikes me as a nimbler, cheaper, and more understandable architecture than the elaborate knowledge graphs so many are clamoring for.
AI Townhall with Tyler Cowen
An insightful conversation. At one point, Cowen mentioned his team is avidly using AI as individuals, but struggling to integrate it into broader systems and software. I’m seeing this in other organizations too. We’re in a liminal period when AI is very good at some tasks but not yet able to orchestrate complex cross-team workflows. Perhaps it will at some point. But for now, it needs humans architecting systems.