Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Big tech advise$ educator$ to drop the coding and teach the AI.

Every few years, rich people advise educators on what to educate. This advice often comes as, “Here is money for an after-school program,” and “here is money for in-school programs,” and “here is money, do what we say or else.”

When my kids were in school, it appeared as if the math books were written by a company that made calculators. The textbooks were full of color photographs of that company’s calculators with instructions on how to use them. Amazing stuff. Great advice.

A few years ago, the rich tech companies were doing “the hour of code” and such. They lobbied state$ to include computer science as required course$ for high $chool graduation. Great stuff! And, by the way, the more people who knew programming, the more choices employers had, and the lower the salaries they had to pay to hire programmers. Well, that was a convenient side result.

Now, the rich tech companies want schools to have “the hour of AI” and such. AI skills should be taught in school.

I learned matrix multiplication when I was in school back in the time of scratching on cave walls with rocks. Surely they still teach these math operations that are the basis of AI? Oh wait, that’s not the type of AI the tech companies want to teach. They want to teach the kids to turn to this chattering bot instead of that one because we make this one and we want you to pay for our chattering bot not the other fellas’ chattering bot. Oh, that type of education.

Sigh. I guess I am too simple minded to understand the education industry. Teach kids to read. Teach kids math. Teach kids to ask questions, seek answers, and learn. And let kids be kids. They are the ones who invent the new stuff.

Ye$, I replaced many of the “s” in this blog post with “$.” No, not a coincidence. I find it unfortunate that much of what is taught in $chools is there because someone went around the block and paid someone else. Perhap$ some good will come of it.

by Dwayne Phillips

We tend to ban the latest tools in school so that students won’t “cheat.” Today’s kids laugh at what prior generations banned.

My granddaughter is in high school (I have to take a moment to comprehend how that happened so fast). We had a short discussion last night on tools for learning. I asked if any students used Claude, ChatGPT et al. in school.

“No,” she quickly answered. “Those are not allowed.”

“When your dad was in high school, they would not allow them to use Wikipedia,” I said.

She almost fell on the floor in disbelief. She protested that Wikipedia was a good source of information and required you to find things and quote things and, and, and how could that be banned.?

Wikipedia was banned in high school a generation ago. She couldn’t imagine that.

And then I went back to my generation. Calculators were banned in college exams. My granddaughter had no response for that one. When her father and mother were in middle school, the math books had pages and pages teaching how to use calculators from Texas. The math books still do.

Those who run the schools ban a tool for one generation. Those who run the schools teach how to use that same tool to the next generation. Ban it this week; teach it next week. I guess we call this progress? I don’t know.

Still, sometimes it is funny to relate to the current generation how the old folks did silly things back in the day.

by Dwayne Phillips

Now and then, something surfaces that is BIG and IMPORTANT. What was believed to be important in the past isn’t. Move on. Who, however, moves on?

Person A: Look what I found. This is important.

Person B: What now?

Person A: No look. This is really important. This is the way we should go. This will change everything.

Person B: Okay, I see the merit. And …

Person A: Great. You see that this is far more important than what you wanted earlier. So you’ll drop that, right?

Person B: Uh, now what a moment.

Person A: Come on. You agree that this surpasses your old ideas.

Person B: Yes, it does. It also surpasses your old ideas, right>

Person A: Well, yes. It does. But

Person B: So how about you drop your old ideas, I keep my old ideas, and we combine my old ideas with this new idea that surpasses everything?

Person A: Well, I just assumed we would combine my old ideas with this new idea and …

Person B: Why not the other way around? We agree that this new idea surpasses both our old ideas. You won’t mind dropping your ideas.

At this point in the conversation, a third and wiser person enters the room and shows the loss of rational thought in Person A and Person B. It is a shame, however, that the third and wiser person rarely exists and walks into the room at just the right moment. It is left to Person A and Person B to resolve this. We can do this. Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

We have invented a new job: it is the chatic (pronounced like “static”) or the chattering bot technician.

I often work as a chattering bot technician. Substitute the name of your favorite system (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Coilot, Mistral, Qwen, Grok, etc.) for chattering bot and you have it. We employ “ChatGPT technicians” and “Claude technicuans.”

I use one of these chattering bot at least half the day to manipulate information. Information in, information out in a different format that people want. Is it programming? Is it engineering? I don’t know. It is somewhat technical and reduced from art to a science of sorts.

I think that makes me a technician: a worker who has special skills and training in a practical, technical, or scientific field. Their main job is to install, test, fix, or run machines and equipment. (from Wikipedia)

I run the chattering bot.

Okay, “chattering bot technician” takes too long to say and type. Let’s shorten it to “chat tech.” That is two words and two syllables. Well, you know how we like to mumble and slur things together. After five minutes and five utterances, we have one word of two syllables or “chattech.” Well, let’s slur that together to make it even faster to mumble.

Before you know it, we are spewing out “chatic” in the same rhythm and emphasis that we say the word “static.”

Now the boss says, “Meet Dwayne. He’s one of our chatics. He’s been doing chatic for a year.”

New job. New profession. New title. Let’s see if it catches on. Probably not, but it’s worth a try.

by Dwayne Phillips

AI enabled completing a 12-page report in five minutes. No, that took ten years of effort.

Somehow, using a new piece of software became cheating or something bad. A request arrived at work. Click. Boom. Pow. Out goes a 12-page report. Five minutes. Next?

Cheating!

Consider, however, that the five-minute task was backed by ten years of work. The company uses SharePoint (I receive no compensation from any of the purveyors of products.) It was quite an expense and ordeal to install that ten years ago. The company has piled layers upon layers of documents into SharePoint over the ten years. That was a lot of copying, pasting, moving, etc. over a long period of time. It cost blood, sweat, tears, and salaries.

Then the company pays one of these chattering bot companies to use the new tool. Then the company pays people who have decades of experience in logical thinking, structured thinking, and using tools like FORTRAN, C, and all those things nobody uses any longer. All those by-gone tools instilled knowledge into these people. And all that cost blood, sweat, tears, and salaries. Apply all that experience to markup languages and “skills” and such. More salaries.

And all of a sudden, out of no where, Click, Boom, Pow. Five minutes and the report is done. Funny how that is so simple and inexpensive (N O T !).

Sure, it all seems so simple and quick and must be cheating to accomplish so much in so little time. Funny how that is.

by Dwayne Phillips

These blog posts are longer, i.e., don’t have many words. Sorry, I can’t help myself.

My blog posts aren’t very long (see, I could have shortened that sentence by removing the word “very” and also the word “blog.”). I recently wrote about the Paramedic Method of Editing. That method helps editors shorten writing, eliminate words, bring clarity, have brevity. I have been using that method without knowing about it. Brevity and clarity were my goals.

When writing, I edit before my fingers touch the keyboard. That is a great skill; that is a horrible curse. I edit all the time. I edit my thoughts. I edit your thoughts. I edit your words. I edit your speech while you speak. (You and your refer to anyone else in the room.) I cut, cut, and cut more in the moment. Sometimes, too often, I am not nice. That is the curse portion of this.

I read many blog posts. I read many things written by many people in many forums. I marvel at how blog posts are so long. I wonder why I’m not writing such long posts with so many words. And then I remember that I edit in a harsh and unreasonable manner.

I am stretching this blog post. I am trying to leave the words and not cut, cut, and cut more. I am not doing well at that.

And that is why these posts are not longer.

by Dwayne Phillips

If it is important to me to tell others what I think, I write it myself. If it is just stuff that a machine could write, let the machine write it.

I write this blog. I sit in the coffee shop on Saturday mornings and press every key on the keyboard to put every word in the blog. I don’t have to do that. I could prompt AI, copy, paste, and be done with it faster with much less strain on my joints. At my age, anything that lessens strain on the joints is worth it. Well, almost anything.

Why don’t I have AI write this? Because this is important to me. I want to tell you what I think. These thoughts have been bouncing around in my head for days, weeks, months, years. Yes, some of these things have been bothering me for years. Something finally turned on the light and here it is. Don’t blame AI for this; it is me.

And then, why do I have AI write something? Believe me, I have AI pump out many words on many topics on many days. Because those somethings are just somethings. Words are required. Bam. Push the button. There are words. Pump them out. Don’t waste time typing. Just do it and move on.

If it is important, it deserves the effort.

If it is just something the machine can do, let the machine do it.

Simple. Now for a refill of coffee.

by Dwayne Phillips

Perhaps those big, bad datacenters aren’t so bad.

How do you think that works?

• You take a dozen photos of your new-born nephew.
• You listen to a new song or an old song.
• You find a Chinese restaurant that is open at this hour.
• You find a gas station on an empty stretch of highway when the needle is bouncing off empty.

or how about

• That automated external defibrillator that brought your grandmother back to life
• The integrated continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) paired with wearable insulin pumps that keeps your next door neighbor alive
• The imagery of the inside of your colon that locates cancer while it is still treatable
• A dozen things in an Intensive Care Unit that keeps several dozen people alive

They work because of datacenters.

Datacenters are big. Still think datacenters are bad?

by Dwayne Phillips

AI writes more code than people can review. Now AI can review code. So why waste time by having people review code? There are benefits.

AI is writing code, i.e., software is writing software. AI can write code 24 hours a day without a break. Wow! And AI writes code fast. Double wow!! And AI can review the code AI writes. Triple wow!!!

Where are the people? What do the people do? Should people waste time reviewing code? No, but yes. No, people should not waste time. Yes, people should review code.

Many years ago, the late consultant and writer Jerry Weinberg told me about organizations where programmers reviewed the code of other programmers. After a while, errors dropped significantly in these organizations. It was not from the code reviews catching errors early. The improvement came from the learning. People reading the work of their colleagues learned from their colleagues. The learning improved the quality of work.

Reading led to Learning, Learning led to higher Quality.

Hmm. Maybe people don’t have the time to read everything AI writes. I believe people have some time for some reading and some learning and some improving. Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

We return to the era of the main computer center and waiting for computer time.

Way back in the previous millennium, I was leaving graduate school. While in school, I had access to a new 32-bit minicomputer (I think it was made by Perkin-Elmer if anyone else remembers that time). One problem was I had to be sitting in the computer room of our lab to use the minicomputer. I didn’t have to sign up for time on the machine as I was a chosen student and given access anytime I was awake. Still, I had to make the drive to the building.

Then I bought my on personal computer. It only had 16-bit words. It only had 640K of RAM. It only ran MS-DOS. It was only this and only that and only lots of things. The difference was that I owned it and it sat in my home.

I could run the software I was developing anytime I wanted. The software was limited by all the “only this and only that” of the computer, but it ran now.

When was the last time you had to sign up for computer time and had to wait your turn? I had to do so last week. My credits, or whatever they call them, on my chattering bot account ran out. I pay $20 a month, but there is a limit to how much I can chatter and agent and loop. When I hit the limit, I have to wait until Thursday morning to do anything. (Why Thursday? A mystery of the universe that remains a mystery.)

Once again, there is the big computer that runs everything fast — when it is my turn. And I guess I can run a chattering bot locally, but slow, but now, but slow.

We have come a long way and it took a long time to return to where we started.