Musings on the Future of the Internet
I decided to ask both ChatGPT and Google Bard to provide three arguments about why this particular exclusivity deal was in violation with the Sherman Act.
Completely in alignment with my expectations, ChatGPT immediately announced that it was unable to answer such a question, but it happily explained some generics about the Sherman Act. Bard, on the other hand, gave a seemingly quite convincing breakdown of the reasons for and against an anti-competitive ruling.
Read moreI wanted to build Firefox from source in order to implement the changes found in the patch stack linked above. That’s the beauty of open source – I was able to be sent a patch that someone wrote last summer, and even though it hasn’t been made production-ready and merged, I can start working with it immediately.
Read moreThe 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.
Read moreToday, 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.
Read moreMy 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.
Read moreAs 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.
Read more“A computer program representing a person” – is personalized artificial intelligence the ultimate destination for the browser user agent?
Read moreI created a poem using fridge magnets, then asked three different AI chat bots to interpret my work. Bard, surprisingly, nailed it.
Read moreThe 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
Read moreLast 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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