Working Up

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” […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I guess we live in an age where we have to state this, even though many disbelieve. If the grammar is too good, AI must have written it. If the style has changed, AI must have written it. If fill-in-the-blank, AI must have written it. It is possible to write with good […]

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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 […]

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by Dwayne Phillips AI is a tool to be used by those who provide ice cream cones and honey buns. Lose sight of that and advance at your peril. Who is going to be the winner in all this AI competition? Who is going to be the loser in this? After all, avoiding losing is […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Which way is AI going? The big datacenter or on my little laptop computer? We seem to be at some fork in the road regarding artificial intelligence. The big (colossal) datacenters are rising from the farmlands of America. Big, bigger, and even bigger. If the price doesn’t run into the hundreds of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Vibe coding shows us that coding is not all there is to developing software. No duh! For many years I applied to jobs for software engineers and later what was called “developers.” “How many recent years have you written Java?” was a common question (substitute any other language). I tried to explain […]

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by Dwayne Phillips All this computing power, datacenters, rising prices for hardware, land, water, electric power, etc. for what? To plan a party? This is utter waste. Come on, stop it! Wired recently had an article on the full story of OpenClaw (is that the name they eventually decided to use?). That is the agent […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Can’t use one of those AI tools in your workplace. Solve that problem. Some wise person once said something about a hammer and a nail. It goes something like, “if the only tool you have is a hammer, the world looks like a nail.” This has something to do with another wise-person […]

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