Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Information created with funds provided by the public is owned by the public. Hence, it is in the public domain.

Public domain is an interesting and fundamental concept. The writings of Jane Austen, one example, are in the public domain. The copyright protection she earned by writing in her lifetime has expired. Anyone can publish her works and sell them.

There is another aspect of the public domain that seems to escape people, particularly those people who are employed by the public. If the public pays for something to be created, the public owns that. It is in the public domain. If members of the public who are employed by the government write something, that something is in the public domain. Members of the public should have access to it and be able to profit from it in business.

If public funds are used by a government agency to write software, that software—created with money from the public—is in the public domain.

This is pretty simple. I am not a lawyer, so some lawyers may write and explain how my simple thoughts may be incorrect.

by Dwayne Phillips

AI agents are all the rage. Really? Of course these things are old news.

OpenAI released the ChatGPT Agent recently. Wow! Great stuff! Okay, it is pretty good stuff. Here is a prompt in plain, everyday English. When something happens, do something. Here are instructions in plain, everyday English. Do that complex task. Good stuff.

Uh, let’s see. Programming a computer: if this then do that. Uh, been doing that since someone invented a one and a zero.

But wait, this is more complicated. This involves analysis of lots of data that is complicated and requires some computation (and maybe “thougtht”) before doing something else that is complicated and requires some computation (and maybe “thought”).

I did a PhD dissertation in computer vision in the late 1980s. I used an idea called a frame where I attached actions to the frame. Analysis of imagery caused an action in the frame to happen. Sort of like an AI agent? That was way back when. I didn’t invent the frame. It existed from a couple of decades before me. It was just something useful that fit part of what I was doing. Old stuff.

Ten years ago I worked with some grad students at George Mason University. They were doing what AI agents are doing. Complex analysis auto-magically triggering complex actions. Too bad they didn’t call their work agentic AI. I guess folks would have laughed at them, but that is more history.

Well, today’s AI agents do much more with much more. They should, they run on super-duper computers the size of giant buildings (called AI datacenters). My AI frames ran on an Intel 386 processor (or was it a 286 processor? I forget).

AI agents? Lots of potential. I walk into a building, tell a computer, “I have a pain here in my lower back.” The computer triggers a series of exams using computer-controlled equipment, analyzes the results, and prescribes treatment. I tell a computer, “Sell this family land.” The computer finds the going rate for land, runs advertisements in the right venues, takes calls from buyers, shows the buyers videos of the land, and has the buyer sign a contract and deposit the money in my account.

Yes, things like the above are useful. Got an AI agent that does those things? Let me know when.

by Dwayne Phillips

Replace people with AI? Cut human jobs? Deciders at companies are deciding these things. It is unfortunate, but deciders at companies have a history of choosing poorly.

Replace people and their jobs with AI. Think of the benefits. Save money. Better the bottom line. And remove some of those pesky people whose major contribution is giving me a headache.

On the other hand, these are tough decisions. The decisions will come from company owners et al. Those folks are known for “choosing poorly” as someone once said in a movie. Well, we all choose poorly the first time we choose. We all choose poorly many times we choose.

This universal mistake making doesn’t help the person who becomes unemployed and struggles to provide for their family.

Here is a prediction and it is one I make with great confidence: the first few rounds of decisions about replacing humans with software will be wrong. There will be much backtracking and changing.

by Dwayne Phillips

There is too much talk out there online. Companies should block that so people can read reliable sources. I know just the source for them.

The Internet cost$ nothing. Well, a few dollars a month to Xfinity or someone or something, but really, the cost is nothing. I can access all sorts of good information. I can publish all sorts of good information (if the information comes from me, it is good).

But then again, every yahoo out there can publish on the Internet. Lots of misinformation, disinformation, and dat-information out there. We need to stop dat-information.

I am not naive. This is a political topic. Some politicians want to regulate speech online. I agree there is lots of bad information online that misleads people into doing harm to themselves and others. I wish dat-information wasn’t there. I wish people noted better information.

My information of course falls in the “better” category. Listen to me. It seems I am not the only one who believes that my information is better. It seems that is part of the human condition.

Should conventional wisdom be challenged? Should conspiracy theorists publish and garner attention? If not, we would still have the four food groups (something the dairy lobby published). If not, we would still treat women for hysteria. We would measure the size and shape of a person’s head to determine whom to hire and to whom we loan money. The list of conventional wisdom from experts and purveyors of good information goes on and on.

Sigh. What to do? Hope for the best; prepare for the worst. And contribute good information in a wise manner. It may be worth the effort. Again, I am not naive, but I believe that good washes out bad. Let’s try.

by Dwayne Phillips

Ever notice how some people speak software during meetings? Are they afraid? Where is their confidence?

I don’t hear well. Too many years in noisy equipment rooms with fans blowing too loud. Hence, I concentrate on what people say and the volume they use when saying it.

I’ve noticed that many people speak at one volume when having “normal” chit chat conversations. Then a meeting starts. The volume drops instead of rises. It should rise as there are many people scattered about a large room and the need to address everyone is important. Yet the volume drops.

Confidence has fled. Fear has arrived. What happened?

Some of us are hams (an old adjective meaning we love the spotlight and can’t wait to show off). Most of us aren’t. When fear arrives, volume drops.

Why are some people afraid in some meetings? What have we as managers done to allow fear to rule our people? We need to find the problem and fix it. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

I can do something wrong. I can do something right, but be mistaken in how I tell the story of the doing. There is a difference. Is one mistake better?

I can do something wrong. For example, not tighten the lug nuts properly when I change a tire on a car.

I can do something right, but recount it wrong. For example, change the tire properly but have the story of how to change a tire all backwards and incorrect.

There is a difference in these things. One means I am in trouble when driving down the road. The other means that anyone who listens to me on how to change a tire may have trouble one day.

I can do the job wrong and recount it wrong. Yikes. I can do the job right and recount it right. Yes, that’s desirable. All this can give me a headache.

Enough about changing tires. The same applies to big things that project managers and heads of industry and government do. It all requires some thinking and caring. Perhaps that is the lesson of all this. Let’s all think more. Let’s all care more. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Once again, we celebrate the birth of our nation. We celebrate that our nation exists. We celebrate that folks from other places like our nation so much that they scramble to come here.

Happy birthday America (tomorrow). We are still here. Folks from other places seem to think we have something so good here that they scramble and do just about anything to come here and stay here. Must be something good here.

Yep, and we disagree all the time about ourselves. Don’t see many folks leaving. Something must be pretty good here.

Happy birthday to a place where something good happens everyday.

by Dwayne Phillips

I learned the wrong way. I learned. Is there a wrong way to learn?

Once in 7th grade, I was on a self-study path in a math class. I read a few pages, took a test, graded my test (usually a bad grade), read the correct answers, and, “Oh, that’s the answer. That is what we are doing here!”

The teacher saw me doing this and told me I was learning the wrong way. I was supposed to know the answers before taking the test. I was supposed to learn the material by reading a few pages.

I shrugged. The test grades were not recorded. The test grades were meaningless. So I learned from the tests, not the few poorly written pages I read before the test. And I learned. And the teacher kept telling me that I was learning the wrong way.

Is there a wrong way to learn? I suppose there are some learning methods that are more efficient than others. Some learning methods may be less painful than others in real life. In school? Is there a wrong way to learn?

In a recent case, I asked a chatbot to write some Python code to (1) pull information from WordPress-generated XML then (2) pull information from an mbox (MS email) file.

I looked at the code and learned that there are Python libraries for these two types of solutions. Oh, I learned about the libraries by reading the answer. Was that wrong? I don’t know. I do know that I learned.

by Dwayne Phillips

Just because something could go wrong doesn’t mean it will. Perhaps we should let well-meaning try it.

Look what is possible with the new AI, robots, machines, chemicals, etc. Yes, but, I have found a way to turn the good possibilities into bad possibilities. I have devised a test that the new whatever-it-is will fail. See? Harmful.

Let’s form a group of half-a-dozen people to monitor this. In a few years we have grown from four to four hundred and our budget has boomed some multiple of a thousand percent. We are succeeding and need to bust out of the basement of some agency into our own four-letter government agency. Then it’s just a few years until we are a three-letter agency. We are regulating the world!

Okay, perhaps a bit farfetched, but not by much. I have seen it happen. There is risk (potential problems) and there is reward (potential good). Perhaps we are a bit too pessimistic and see more problems than good. We need to regulate to prevent the potential problems.

Enough politics. We don’t have to be inside government agencies to regulate. We can do this in business and not-for-profits as well. Kids must wear expensive gear to protect themselves while playing soccer. Those five-year-olds can play pretty rough, you know. Okay, that was farfetched, but not as far as a “reasonable” person might go.

Let’s allow the kids to play and wear t-shirts with Gumby on them (yes, there are elementary schools that ban cartoon characters at school). Let’s allow someone to try delivering medicine to the infirm via an autonomous ice chest with wheels. Yeah but someone could…yeah, and some well-meaning person could do the opposite. How about giving the well-meaning persons among us a chance? We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Perhaps we have become a bit too smart for our own good. Time to swing the pendulum back to practical, in-real-life activities.

Yet another pendulum swings back and forth. We are in the 21st century and harnessing the power or our brains and augmenting our brains with AI and all such marvelous things.

Hey, could you fix the leak in the toilet so it stops making noise and I can sleep at night? Uh, oh, well, you see… flashback to the Big Bang Theory episode where the scientists can’t change a flat tire.

We live in a world of publications and published thoughts, i.e., the PDF file. I am so smart. I dominate here.

And then there is in-real-life or IRL. Fix the toilet or the lawnmower or remove the green stuff that forms on the north side of the vinyl-sided house. And how about wire the wires that bring power to that new datacenter? Yeah, instead of a degree with $300,000 debt in college loans from fill-in-the-blank-with-your-least-favorite-private-college, what about a year at a trade school to learn Ohm’s law and where the white, black, and green wires go on the outlet?

Knowledge is good (wasn’t that in some movie?). There are many types of knowledge. Some are in real life, not publications. Time to adjust.