Author: Liv Erickson

Development, Machine Learning

Open Source, not OpenAI

The open source movement gives me hope. It’s how I’m able to run multiple different interfaces to local language models that can be fine-tuned on my computers with my own data, and know that it’s not leaving my own environment. It’s how I can build the Firefox web browser locally, and add custom patches so that I can run experiments with my browsing history safely. It’s how I can picture re-imagined fair value exchange systems working.

The commercial software stack is collapsing, locking users into increasingly tightly controlled environments where customization is locked away, abstracted because of its complexity. This is not the way.

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by Liv Erickson6 Min Reading
Development, Machine Learning

TIL: How to Build Firefox from Source

Today, I learned how to build Firefox from source. I’ve been a Mozillian since 2019, but this is the first time that I built the browser on my own machine. My sophomore year of college, I used Visual Studio and en embedded iexplore.exe window to make a simplified browser that had bookmarks permanently placed as UI buttons. I can’t even remember if it had an address bar, but I remember feeling accomplished that my portal to the internet was uniquely mine.

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by Liv Erickson3 Min Reading
Development, Machine Learning, Spatial Computing

In the Era of Multi-Dimensional Computing, XR is the Future of Front-End; AI is the Future of Back-End

My work over the past ten+ (wtf?) years has focused on emerging technologies, primarily spatial computing and machine learning – so this moment is pretty spectacular to see. We’re entering a new age where generative AI can create infinite worlds of content as a tool to aid and augment human creativity and understanding, and with today’s announcement, we’re creeping ever-closer to advancements in spatial computing hardware that allows us to experience technology in ways that allow us to use our natural cognition to better facilitate our relationship to information.

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by Liv Erickson3 Min Reading
Development, Machine Learning, neurodivergence

SelfOS: Visions of a Personal Agent

As we begin crossing a new productivity frontier with the availability of large language models and advances in artificial intelligence algorithms, I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of these tools in helping us introspect and communicate. Enter the idea of SelfOS. My long-term vision for SelfOS is ambitious – a personal operating system for anyone. In practice, there will be infinite ways of building a SelfOS. It’s not a single technology stack, but instead a series of principles grounded in the belief that technology should be used as a tool to empower individuals, rather than as systems of oppression.

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by Liv Erickson6 Min Reading
Uncategorized

Communicative Intent

The term “communicative intent” describes the underlying message that a human is trying to get across when they are speaking with / writing to / generating art for another human to interpret. As humans, we build on our existing models of the world and our experiences to interpret one’s communicative intent when we engage with another person. One of the challenges with large language models and artificial intelligence is that there is no fundamental communicative

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by Liv Erickson3 Min Reading
Random Thoughts

NYC, One Year Later

Last April, my partner and I made the decision to sell our recently-purchased home in the greater Washington D.C. area so that I could attend business school at Columbia University and get my MBA. We’re a year in, just moved into our new apartment in Astoria, Queens, and what a heck of a year it’s been.

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by Liv Erickson3 Min Reading
neurodivergence, Random Thoughts

Executive Functioning

Becoming comfortable with my inconsistent executive functioning has been (and continues to be) an ongoing journey in undoing internalized ableism and finding self-love. Sometimes, I struggle with executive function because I’ve damaged the inside of my small intestines, and my body can’t absorb the nutrients from food I’m eating. Sometimes, I’m struggling because I had multiple weeks with more than 40 hours of meetings, and met dozens of new people, and I have to balance all of that with the actual “sit down and do the work” part of life.

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by Liv Erickson3 Min Reading