Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

This current trend in AI fails miserably when confronting the nemesis of all logic—the American teenager.

I recently read about a big fast food chain in America that installed one of these AI chattering bots on the drive through ordering system. Let AI take the orders. Save cost. Improve profit. This will work. This is rational business practice.

Along comes the American teenager.

“I’ll have two of this and two of that … (good so far) and 1,000 cups of water and 2,000 packets of ketchup.”

Now that is FUNNY! At least some American teenagers consider it funny as panic ensues inside the kitchen when the human workers attempt to fill the order or something.

The current trend in AI falls back to supervised learning in one form or another. At one time in AI, the trend was what we know call symbolic AI. An AI practitioner would describe the world as a set of laws or rules.

Or course the old way had its problems. And, by the way, the new trend has its problems, too. The obvious answer, which doesn’t seem to be obvious to many in business, is to combine the strengths of these two and many other approaches. One approach does not work in all cases.

And if you are running a fast food business, the American teenager is one of the cases.

I can cite many other cases where the American teenager foiled the best efforts of adults. I won’t do that as some teenagers will read this and it will trigger more “fun.”

by Dwayne Phillips

Managing work and leading people isn’t easy. It is, however, the job of managers.

I have recently seen several articles about the struggle to bring people back into the office two, three, or even five days a week. And there are requirements to prove that a person actually came to the office, stayed for more than a cup of coffee, and accomplished some work.

What should the policy be? Simple. The policy should be THINK. Think about this person, their personality, their work style, the work they are assigned to accomplish, how that work affects other people and the organization, and tell that person what they need to do.

Yeah, but…

That means thinking about every person every day, talking to every person every day, ensuring the work is accomplished, ensuring every person is reasonably happy with their job and contribution, and… Gosh, that is a lot of work. It is much simpler to declare one policy for everyone and expect everyone to fall in line or toe the line or some cliche. Much simpler. Much less thinking.

Sorry. I am the manager. You are the manager. This is our job. We lead people and manage work. We can do it. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Borrowing from The Software Crisis of the 1990s, I declare The AI Crisis.

A recent report from MIT claims that 95% of AI projects attempted by well-meaning folks fail. Gosh. That is a pretty high percentage.

I remember the software crisis of the late 1980s and all through the 1990s. Reports like this MIT report were everywhere. High percentages of software projects failed. What was wrong? What to do?

What was wrong? People were doing stupid things. “Let’s write some software to implement my great idea. I think it will work.” This brought phrases like, “Hope isn’t a plan” and such. Yes, stupid things. Hire a roomful of programmers, lock them in a room with no windows, yell at them now and then, and good things are supposed to happen, right? Good grief. Of course good things wouldn’t happen, but well-meaning folks thought it would.

One thing to come along was the Capability Maturity Model whereby people would decide what their problem was before attempting a solution. Imagine such a concept! The Capability Maturity Model helped a lot of people do better. Basic problem-solving basics.

Then the agile methods came in. Hey, we have tools that lessen the cost of experiments. Let’s run more experiments, learn more, then do more. That also helped a lot of people do better.

Still, you need some idea of the problem you are attempting to solve.

Now, here we go again, AI is everywhere. Everyone must have an AI project or be left behind in a pile of silicon dust (I think silicon dust is also called sand, but I digress). Let’s hire a roomful of AI people (what do you call those people?), lock them in a room with no windows, yell at them now and then, and good things are supposed to happen, right? Gosh.

Of course this fails. The high failure rate puts us in The AI Crisis. Someone write it down that I wrote it down.

We still need some idea of the problem we are attempting to solve.

And another thing, a lab project is not a marketable product. It is a lab project. Take the result, give it to a bunch of hardened adults, and they might produce a marketable product.

AI requires compute power—money. AI requires people—more money. AI requires direction and some hardened adults who have turned ideas into marketable products before.

Just flail around and you will become part of the 95%. Come on, we can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes the best pieces of writing are still from simple tools and strong emotions.

I recently read yet another post from a writer about how in the world you can write while you are traveling or on vacation or something or other that perplexes those who attempt to write.

Ten years ago I was on an overnight flight from one place to another. The places don’t matter; I was stuck in an airplane seat for eight hours. I had my laptop computer, but the seating was too cramped to open the lid and type words.

I had a pencil and one of those $1 composition notebooks.

And I was angry about something.

Simple tools; strong emotions.

I wrote for hours. I filled 20 pages with words. I still pull out that old notebook and look at the words of that trip. They are some of the best writing I have done in the last 20 years. I won’t share what I wrote.

The science fiction writer Ray Bradbury advised writing about things that scared you—things that brought strong emotions. I think Bradbury, maybe it was another famous science fiction writer of the 20th century, would rent a typewriter in a library to write. Yes kids, people used to rent mechanical typewriters.

Simple tools and strong emotions. Write.

Not a writer but a painter or an engineer or a chef?

Same advice.

by Dwayne Phillips

It seems that when we stop doing something, we forget how to do it, sort of.

I recently read reports of AI causing “deskilling.” (pronounced de-skilling, not des-killing)

It seems that some folks were using AI tools to do something they used to do all the time. After a few months, one of those senior-level decision makers decided to take away the AI tools. The folks struggled to do what they had done earlier. They had de-skilled. I guess that is a nice way of saying they forgot what they were doing. The forgetting, of course, was temporary. They remembered what they knew and went on with the work.

There is a way to put a piece of paper into a typewriter so that it is straight. I used to know how to do that. I don’t any longer. I guess with some practice I could re-learn or re-skill that. There is a way to put tractor feed paper into a tractor feed printer so that it is straight. Same thing with that skill. I was de-skilled.

Then again, as I have noted in some other blog post somewhere at some time, these tools can teach us things that we didn’t realize we knew. Did you notice such and such? Yes, that is how this tool works.

Funny how the mind works. Practice something and it becomes something we do without thinking. The headlights on my car turn themselves on and off. I can’t remember how to do that. No great loss. Now, that typewriter thing had something to do with moving that roller thing so the paper could slide around loosely or something.

by Dwayne Phillips

The makers of the first generation of the home computer are passing.

I saw recently that Steve Wozniak is now 75 years old. I clearly recall the first time I saw an Apple computer. It was early in 1980. I was still a senior engineering student at LSU. I was in one of those offbeat stores that were on the fringe of the campus. I had taken a bunch of computer programming courses, but never held more than a programmable calculator in my hand.

The Apple computer was not famous at the time. That came later with VisiCalc and a real reason for owning a home computer—do something useful.

Here was a computer. You could own your own computer. You could write programs on your own computer. And who would want to do that?

Anyways, Woz and Jobs helped invent the home computer. They didn’t do the background work that made that possible. HP, Intel, Atari, et al. already existed and were already making the parts that were needed for a home computer.

Jobs died a few years back. Woz appears to be in good health, but he is 75 years old. Gosh. That generation is nearing the time when they will pass. Makes me feel old. Then again, lots of things make me feel old.

by Dwayne Phillips

Yet another rant by an old man about something we used to do.

etiquette: noun, the customary code of polite behavior in society or among members of a particular profession or group.

Hat etiquette. See above.

I am old. I still have scars from my parents and grandparents and school teachers. Take you hat off, now.

I guess there is something wrong with me to expect a male to remove their hat when indoors, especially while eating a meal. I suppose I am too old for some of these expectations.

Is etiquette completely gone? Might as well be, it is too hard to spell. Is etiquette something cultures of supposedly superior folks push onto supposedly inferior folks? Perhaps. This is all too much to cogitate this early in the morning.

For the time being, sir, be a gentleman and remove you hat indoors.

by Dwayne Phillips

One again, our world plunges into debate about … bunny rabbits on trampolines.

Are those bunny rabbits bouncing on a trampoline real? Oh no, they aren’t. AI generated that video. Who is the dastardly person who perpetrated that hoax on us all? We need to find a villain and do what it is we do to villains these days.

It wasn’t real. It was funny and entertainment. That’s entertainment folks. Stuff that isn’t real, but makes us watch a little longer than we should because we laugh when we look at it. Bugs Bunny wasn’t real, but we watched and laughed. Same with the Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote and the list goes on and on.

Yeah, but… Of course there is a “but” this time. The computer created something so real we thought it was real. We could tell Bugs Bunny wasn’t real. We couldn’t tell the bunnies on the trampoline wasn’t real. Well, some of us could tell it wasn’t real when we looked close enough, but that’s not fair.

Milli Vanilli won a Grammy Award in 1990. Then we learned it wasn’t real. We were mad because someone entertained us with something that wasn’t real. We were fooled. We felt foolish. We were mad.

Entertainment is mostly stuff that isn’t real. We suspend belief for a moment or two. We are entertained. Come on folks, it’s just bunny rabbits on a trampoline. Surely there are issues more important to discuss.

by Dwayne Phillips

We do everything according to our documented documents—except when we don’t.

Mr. Zuckerburg at Meta has created a superintelligence group to do something wonderful in AI. He is using the tried-and-true documented management practice of the skunk works. The skunk works is a special place where you put some really smart folks and tell them to do something wonderful, something that is not possible back at the factory where everyone follows the rules. Break the rules; break the mold, and do something wonderful.

We do everything there according to the tried-and-true. We’ve been mistaken many times in the past. We went to the trouble to record those mistakes and learn from them. We have rules and guides and procedures and all those things work for us—until they stop working for us.

One day, we wake up and our smartest folks are frustrated with all these lessons learned. “Okay,” they groan, “we won’t do stupid things. We won’t do the stupid things that the average folks did last year. We aren’t average. Trust us on this one.”

Then these smartest folks need a new gadget today so they can do something wonderful. “Hold on there,” replies someone in the chain of someones who buy new gadgets. “It’ll take a few days to get the right signatures of approval and then the bids from at least three suppliers and then…”

Then these smartest folks just give up and go to another company that doesn’t have any rules or lessons learned.

So Kelly Johnson at Lockheed created a skunk works to build airplanes that couldn’t be built. So Steve Jobs created a skunk works to build the Mac computer. So Mr. Zuckerburg created a skunk works to build superintelligence. So… the list goes on and on. Some of the famous skunk works created famous things. The great majority of skunk works didn’t invent sliced bread or something as wonderful as sliced bread. They tried, failed, and lapsed into oblivion.

We do everything according to plan, according to lessons learned, according to documents until we don’t. We hit the wall of invention and re-invent the exception to the rule. We try. Sometimes the exception works.

Let’s remember, however, that the exception is the exception. Excellence is an exception. Don’t expect wonderful from the exception. The lessons learned were learned by smart folks who worked hard. Sigh. No one said this would be easy.

by Dwayne Phillips

We have to read the fine print to understand our agreements. Why, however, is there fine print?

I was reading through a contract document recently. I missed several things, just a couple of words buried in a 100-page document. I guess we call those things “the fine print.” Gotta’ read the fine print.

And then again, I have to ask, why is there fine print? If something is important, why is it buried deep in a document in a sentence in a paragraph where the important detail is not the subject?

Well, ya’ just have to be careful. Ya’ just have to read slower and pay attention. Gotcha’!

And then again, I have to ask about that. State general principles. State that not every clause on every line will be specified specifically. The general principles will apply. General principles like, “We will do the best we can. We aren’t perfect. We will make mistakes. Please work with us. We will assume the same about you and will work with you.”

I guess those types of general principles won’t hold up in court or something. We can do better than burying things in the fine print. Let’s do better.