Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

At Brown University, a professor shows that students used AI systems to get good scores on a take-home test. The in-class test scores were much lower. Does any of this matter?

For a few days, this story was sort of famous (here is one version of the story). For one reason or another, a college professor made the mid-term exam take home. Great scores on the test. Some nearly perfect papers. Hmm. That was not the norm. Suspecting cheating and the use of AI, the professor moved the final exam back to in the classroom. The scores were half the take-home test scores.

There are many lessons to be learned here. And, isn’t learning the objective of college and other places of education? I digress, but just a bit. Continue reading.

If the objective of the class was to reward quick recall of previously stated statements, the students were failing. They needed a lookup system to score well on the test. Is that a good objective of an expensive college cla$$?

Perhaps the objective of the class was to know enough to think on your feet or at least while your seat was in a chair in a classroom. That is a rough approximation to real life and being on your feet under pressure.

If this latter example was the objective of the class, it should have been clearly stated. The students were expected to prepare accordingly. Given the poor scores on the final, the professor clearly failed. I am one of those who think the professor fails if the student perform poorly on examinations.

I once took a college course in American government. We had an exam in which we were to know the content of every amendment to the U.S. Constitution by number. The 17th amendment is the direct election of U.S. Senators, by the way. The objective was to be able to answer questions while standing around drinking coffee at work or discussing what the current President did while eating hot dogs on the 4th of July. There was a purpose to the exercise. Clearly stated.

I return to the professor and the college. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Are we having examinations that don’t matter? Why waste the resources?

Perhaps that is the learning objective:

• Otherwise smart and experienced people can waste resources.
• Learn to notice such waste and don’t repeat the folly.

We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

All the pieces are here. Let’s have one download, install, and run.

This is what I want: one piece of software that reads the text files on my computer (.docx, etc.), answers questions about them, writes output to a file, and I can do all the copy-and-paste I want.

pandoc seems to understand all the file format. Apple’s Foundation Model seems to do the language processing. The rest is done by other programs.

Well, one might say, you already have all this. Yes, but that runs mostly in the cloud, and there are all sorts of permissions to read the files on the local computer, and, and, and … And use ollama and pick a model and run this and make sure you have something else installed, and, and, and …

One piece of software that I download, install on the local computer, and run on the local computer. As simple as Word or Excel or gcc. Let’s get with it.

by Dwayne Phillips

Writers can write more than we do. Is this lazy? And, by the way, lazy was the worst thing in the world according to my mother, so that comments stings.

Writers in 2026 are for the most part lazy. — Dean Wesley Smith

Mr. Smith’s comment stings. According to my mother, there was nothing worse in this world than being lazy. Don’t be a bump on a log. Have some gumption. Do something. Surprising to me, gumption is recognized as a correctly spelled word. I thought it was just a made-up sound. But I digress.

Back to lazy writers. I am not banging out text on a manual typewriter. I know that works because at one time in my life I would bang on words on a portable manual typewriter. I wish I still had a portable manual typewriter. They are still available, ribbons and all, but I digress again. I am not walking around a library peering through old reference books. I also did that in the past.

When I need a fact, bang, there it is. When I need a date, bang, there it is. Copy, paste, edit, move on.

Let’s go through the numbers. A person can type 40 words per minute. That is not difficult. The word processors correct spelling mistakes and such. At 40 words per minute, we have 2,400 words per hour. Write only four hours a day, we have 9,600 words. In eight days, we have a 70,000-word novel. That comes to at least 40 novels in a year. We are just making up stories.

Of course 40 novels a year is silly. No one could … Yes, someone could. A novel a month is silly, but entirely possible.

Perhaps writers in 2026 are, for the most part, lazy.

Let’s drop from novels to short stories. Let’s go for 3,000 words in a short story. Hmm. A couple of hours in one afternoon a week makes a short story a week. Ray Bradbury is quoted, “Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.” Maybe it is possible, but Mr. Bradbury’s words are inspiring.

All this is to say something about what I could be doing and what I am doing. I am still in a full-time paying job. I don’t have the energy at the end of the day to bang out a thousand words an hour. Retirement looms. Maybe I will stop being lazy.

by Dwayne Phillips

I receive about one phone call a week from an actual person. What happened?

I have a cell phone. I still have a landline phone. Several times a day, the landline rings and a nice computer voice tells me about home improvement. These computer voices are becoming nicer. I guess that is an improvement to these unwanted interruptions.

Sometimes an actual person calls me on one of these two phone numbers. That happens about once a week.

Perhaps my memory is lapsing, but it seems that people used to call me on the phone. Relatives called. Soccer teams called. People called. We talked. We decided. We acted.

I guess text messages replaced conversations. Wait a minute—I don’t receive text messages from actual people, either. Hmm. It must be email? Nope. Nothing there, either.

I don’t know what happened. No one calls me. No one wants to talk to me or engage me or anything. At least the folks at the coffee shops recognize me when I walk in.

by Dwayne Phillips

Technology changes. Practice changes with the technology. Nothing new here, but it requires me to change. Aargh. Sometimes I don’t like that.

There was a time when Xerox machines didn’t work as well as they do now. I guess I should call them copy machines instead of Xerox machines. There was a time when Xerox dominated the market so much that we… I digress. Times change.

Back in that time, editors put editing marks on manuscripts with blue pencils. The copy machines of the day didn’t “see” the faint blue and didn’t reproduce the blue edits on the copies. This failure to reproduce blue extended to blue ink and signatures.

Therefore, we signed documents in black ink only. Black ink was sure to be reproduced by the copy machines.

Along came high-quality, low-price 300 dot-per-inch and 600 dot-per-inch scanners and printers. It was easy to cut out a person’s signature in black ink, tape it onto a piece of paper, scan it, print it, and viola’. We had faked approval of a document.

Therefore, we signed documents in blue ink only. The scanners and printers worked only in black and white. Blue ink prevented fake signatures on documents.

Along came high-quality, low-price color scanners and printers. We could fake signatures on documents in any color.

Therefore, we did some clever digital signature with clever digital technologies with hash codes and such that kept unique things unique.

All these changes in technology and practice occurred in my time working in offices during one generation.

Now we have technology so that the first question anyone asks when they read what I write is, “Did you write that or did AI write that?”

Somehow I have to prove that you can’t blame AI for the gibberish that appears on the screen or page. It is all my fault.

All this to say, I have to change how I do things as technology changes. What am I do to with a box full of blue pencils? What color ink am I supposed to use this week? Do you want to see the drawers full of pens and pencils in my house? Someone help me.

Change. It happens.

by Dwayne Phillips

Those people are acting crazy! Good grief! Pause and breathe. They are good, smart people. Why would they act that way? Think.

Just recently it happened again. A group of good, smart people were acting crazy in some unexplainable manner. They completely misread what people in my group had written. How could THEY do such to US? They need to all be fired or experience some punishment.

Okay, vented the ventilating angst.

Now stop, breathe, think, ponder.

Those are good, smart people. My group wants to work with them. We want US and THEM to be ALL OF US. Yet, they did…

Again, stop, breathe, think, ponder. Why would they act the way they are acting? What situation pushes them to such? And, what can I do differently?

Stop the ego stuff. What can I do differently? I am the only person in the situation I can control. Yes, I can attempt to influence others, but that is influence not control and that is an attempt, not a certainty. Change is my responsibility, and I control my response.

Yeah, but, yeah but, yeah but… Enough of that.

THEY acted in some way because THEY were in THEIR situation. I am in my situation. Seek to understand their situation. Seek to understand my situation. Seek to react well. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Alas, we worked from home during the PAN(dem)IC. Now we are encouraged to live in the office with everyone else.

In the title of this post, “home” is a verb and “work” is a noun. Make the office your home. Live at work with your colleagues.

During the great PAN(dem)IC (we are learning that much of what we did was a bad idea, especially with schools) we worked from home. Many lessons came from the experience. Many of those lessons are already forgotten.

Now we have AI. Now we are productive. And now we want to home from work instead of work from home. Huh? Wait, this is all backwards — right? Wrong? Are we overcompensating the other way? When will we dampen the oscillations and find some happy median? (When will I stop writing questions and start writing answers?)

I am fortunate in that being in the same room with some of my colleagues is pleasant and productive. Not everyone is that fortunate. The good fortune of some should not prescribe the situation for all. Living in the office is bad for many (I believe most). I recommend a home away from the office. Sprinting at work for a short term for one occasion may work well. Repeating such is folly.

This is not an original thought. Many prior studies conclude the same. Have a full life. Bring all those life experiences to bear on the current work. Live at home. Work at the work place a third of the time — maximum. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

I find an old method of editing that I was using without knowing it.

I recently discovered the paramedic method of editing from UCLA professor Richard Lanham. I think I have been using this method for years without knowing it had a formal beginning and technique. I referred to what I was doing as trying to find the real verb in a sentence.

There are many places that describe the paramedic method. The one I like is here from The Center for Arts and Language. Their example shows breaking a bloated sentence into separate lines to highlight the problems. Once seen, it makes sense on how to remove needless words (from Stunk and White) and write intention instead of extra words.

In their example, the following junk becomes the following brief and clear sentence:

The point I wish to make is that perception is the process of extracting information from stimulation emanating from the objects, places, and events in the world around us.

Perception extracts information from objects, places, and events.

In my current day job, I write proposals attempting to win government contracts. Proposals have page limits. Writing something clearly while removing two-thirds of the pages is good. Therefore, I recommend the paramedic method.

by Dwayne Phillips

Tools cost money. Tools amplify abilities. It may seem obvious, but consider if the amplification is worth the cost.

Tools cost money. Tools also amplify the ability to do something. A lever helps me lift an object. The lever is not free. Is it worth it? That is pretty basic. Of course adults know these and consider them.

Well, several things from this past week weakened my certainty in adults. At Meta, engineers and others were using the AI tools from other companies. They “ran up the bill” beyond estimations. Instead of firing the estimators for being wrong, managers chastised those using the tools. I have no doubt of similar happenings at other companies. Meta is in the news because a few persons “leaked” this news to the news journalers.

And then I attended a seminar where a person from a famous consulting firm (names withheld to protect the guilty) advised those who signed contracts at government agencies to know what they were signing before they signed it. It seems that they were signing contracts whereby users who used tools also “ran up the bill” beyond estimations.

Several things here that I am embarrassed to write. First, don’t buy something that you don’t understand. Read the fine print and understand what it means to pay-by-the-token or something like that.

Second, do not make incentives for people to use tools. If there are incentives, they should be for products produced, not resources consumed.

Third, if a tool costs a dollar and that tool means you don’t have to hire someone else at a hundred dollars, that dollar spent on the tool is a good use of a dollar. At third-and-a-half is, if you spend the dollar on the tool, don’t spend a hundred dollars to hire a person who now has nothing to do.

Again, I am embarrassed to write those three things. AI, or whatever shiny tool appears at the tool store, does not break these and other tenets of business. Sometimes we need reminders. Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

A malady is a setback. A malady teaches a person something unique. That allows the person to do things others cannot.

Permit me to dote on my granddaughter a bit. I am subjective here, but that is my privilege.

She has congenital cataracts, i.e., she was born with cataracts. She sees well-enough to function and will probably have a driver’s license in a couple of years. No driving after dark or other restrictions, but a license to operate a motor vehicle in the daylight.

She is smart — brilliant if you ask me, and since I am writing this, you asked me. She had two brilliant great grandfathers with one being an engineer and the other a minister. Her grandparents and parents were pretty bright as well.

She sits at the intersection of brilliance and malady. While quite smart, none of her ancestors had this malady. She is unique in that she knows what it means to see poorly. She also has the advantages of education and ability. Given all this, I have no doubt that she will do something remarkable that greatly benefits others.

Malady is no fun. It is, however, a resource. We can choose to lament that resource or use it. I believe she will choose wisely.