Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips We want AI systems to act like us. Or do we? Perhaps we want AI systems to act like some of us. But who is “us” and who is “not us?” Testing shows that the latest and greatest large language models will generate bad information about political campaigns. That is wrong; those […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Things are the way they are. But why? An old saying explains much of the reason. There is an old but little known saying, “Things are the way they are because they got that way.” Pause to consider. Yes, of course the saying is correct. We are here because everything and everyone […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When we build systems, build them to do and have no more and no less than we intend. A few pseudo definitions: The users says, “I want a system that does this and that is and like this and that.” The builders say among themselves, “We can do those things and a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Recent advances in chatting or Q&A software has provided the ability to write simple computer programs. Hooray! There is a trend in the workplace called “low-code/no-code.” A person at work writes a ten-line computer program that is helpful in that it will do something in a minute that would take the person […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Aha! I was sort of right. Now companies have teams of folks hunting down stupid in their systems to keep the world safe from stupid. Way back in 2015, I wrote a blog post about being a stupid hunter. This is not a hunter who is stupid, but a hunter whose job […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It is rare that we can understand something from one and only one perspective. We need to walk around the other sides to gain other perspectives. There is a method of describing something called the DoD Architecture Framework or DoDAF. Sometimes DoDAF is quite useful, but sometimes persons misuse it and … […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Events occur in a set order, unless they don’t. Thought is encouraged. The title is from a nursery rhyme (origin unknown by me). The third event is a baby in a baby carriage. Events occur in a set order. Breakfast-lunch-dinner. Entree then desert. Eat breakfast, then brush your teeth (or is that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One of the fundamentals in the engineering of systems and architecture is a “D” word that many loathe in our 21st century. “Let’s hold off on this until we have to decide,” said a hopeful inhabitant of a post-modern universe. Yes, there are things that we don’t have to decide until we […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is yet another fundamental to providing systems that delight users. Have we validated that we verified before vacation? Or is it the other way around? There was a time when verification and validation were so commonly used that we called it “V&V.” Then we wanted independent persons to perform V&V so […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is a reminder of one of the fundamental documents or documentations in creating systems that delight users. It is the Concept of Operations. First things first. We want to provide a system that delights users. Where do we start? Let’s talk with the users; watch the users; learn from the users, […]

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