Anthropic Demo for LLM Text Classification
I’ve typically leaned on classical machine learning tools like scikit-learn and XGBoost for classification tasks. I recently found a demo notebook from Anthr...
Writing
Recent Posts
Why You Should Spend a Day with Anthropic’s Cookbook
Anthropic’s Cookbook is a collection of Jupyter notebooks that teach foundational techniques for working with LLMs. These examples go beyond just using Claud...
My Takes On AI
AI is evolving quickly, with Generative AI and Large Language Models drastically expanding what’s possible and who can tap into its potential. I’m often aske...
Evaluating LLM Applications the Right Way
This article from Hamel Husain is the highest-signal post I’ve read on building evaluations for LLM-based applications. I encourage you to spend 20 minutes r...
How I Used LLMs to Summarize Workflow Hacks from a Twitter Thread
Twitter is the absolute highest signal for learning about leading-edge LLM advancements – if you follow the right people. That said, it’s also overwhelming a...
Thoughts on Anthropic’s Updated Prompt Engineering Workbench
Before we dive in, take 10 minutes to watch Anthropic’s demo video. Seeing the tool in action is way more valuable than any written summary — mine included.
Notes From Google’s Prompt Tuning Playbook
Varun Godbole and his team at Google recently released an excellent prompt tuning playbook, packed with practical advice. Varun, a core contributor to Gemini...
Key Takeaways from Jason Liu’s Podcast on RAG Pipelines
Jason Liu creates incredibly high-signal AI and LLM content online. I try to read or listen to everything he creates. His recent podcast appearance on TwiML ...
Bringing Clear Communication to AI-Driven Teams
Clear communication is critical for effective teams. Using simple, precise language helps bridge gaps across roles. Clear language enables everyone to contri...
Building with AI: Insights from Matt Cynamon and USV
I’ve written before about some key themes I see in building with AI: the importance of creativity and curiosity, the increasing accessibility of tools, and m...
LLMs - Halloween Candy Edition
Check out my Halloween Candy Calculator!
A Year Of Building With LLMs - The Paper You Need To Read
If you have an hour, click the below link and then just close out my website. If you don’t have an hour, you can read below, but it wont be as good.
Testing Your Prompts - Writing LLM Evals
Anthropic created a set of python notebooks detailing how to create prompt evaluations. The GitHub repo is here. If you’re using a language model in your app...
A Firehose of LLM / AI Tidbits
I’ve been pretty far down the rabbit hole of Large Language Models for a while, yet there’s still so much for me to learn. I feel so early in the journey. At...
Building small-scale Custom Software with LLMs and Gumloop
The cost to prototype custom software that solves niche problems can be substantially lower with LLM capabilities. Aspects of a software system that previous...
Custom Podcasts with NotebookLM
I’ve written before that self-guided learning is an area where LLM-based applications excel. It’s never been easier to simply open up ChatGPT and have a conv...
You can build a RAG system too
In software engineering, we have the tendency to invent complex terminology to describe relatively simple concepts. I’ve experienced that as I’ve learned mor...
Hello - You can build now
There’s a video making waves this week in the AI rabbit hole community. If you haven’t yet taken the time to fully understand what’s become possible in the l...
Analyzing companies with LLMs - A simulated investor conversation
Note: I’m trying something new in this post. I’ve included a PDF document at the bottom that contains some full input and output prompts from the experiments...
Investing With Language Models
How we can use information found in unstructured data to drive investment ideas is an area I’m really interested in. When used appropriately, language models...
Inviting AI to the table - Building Software Edition
I’ve written in the past on how I love Ethan Mollick’s idea of “always inviting AI to to the table”. He wrote the following in this post:
Videos within multi-modal models - A whole new world of opportunity
Yesterday I wrote about how long context windows are game-changers, enabling us to solve problems that were essentially unsolvable before.
Using Google Gemini’s Long Context Window to analyze Small Cap Stock Annual Reports
Google built an LLM with a large input context window named Gemini. A context window is the amount of text an LLM can consider at once when generating a resp...
Learning about AI is easier than you think. Just get started
a photo realistic image of a dad playing soccer with his daughter on a lake michigan beach
Narrating your webcam with your own voice and Mister T
When I’m trying to get people excited about AI and LLMs, showing them audio and video stuff usually does the trick. A demo I saw early on that blew me away w...
Building Custom GPTs
Building Custom GPTs is an interesting way to create customized LLM chat functionality with limited effort. I’ve observed that most people using LLMs tend to...
Multi-modal LLM capabilties
Multi-modal LLMs – and specifically the incorporation of vision models – is such an amazing unlock for what is possible. With limited prompting and no custom...
AI Beyond Text Generation: A song about a worm
When ChatGPT first came out, I remember showing my family funny poems that it could write. I remember the novelty of telling ChatGPT to make the poem rhyme, ...
Creating an Image Classifier with Claude 3.5 and Artifacts
This post was written primarily with ChatGPT. Using ChatGPT was part of the experiment. Can I build something moderately interesting and write a post about i...
What I look for when hiring teammates
I previously wrote about the traits of a good leader in a startup. I spent some time reflecting on the key traits I value when hiring new teammates. This isn...
Summarizing and creating a reading list with ChatGPT
I like to read books. I’m always looking for ways to discover new titles. I mainly use Goodreads and Twitter as a discovery mechanism, and I use Goodreads to...
Prompt Engineering Quickstart
I want to build my Prompt Engineering skills. As I highlighted in a previous post, I’m convinced that LLMs will be a huge part of the future of work. Underst...
Clear Thinking : Take-Aways
I finished reading Shane Parrish’s new book Clear Thinking. It has quite a few nuggets of wisdom that I’d like to reference in the future. I’m trying to get ...
Warren The Worm: A Children’s Book by ChatGPT and me
What is this? I used ChatGPT to generate a children’s book about a worm learning a valuable life lesson. This was just a fun way to learn more about the tech...
Making ‘Warren The Worm’: A Children’s Book by ChatGPT and me
I love Ethan Mollick’s ‘Jagged Frontier’ concept with LLMs. We don’t exactly know what LLMs are great at, and what they are bad at — yet. To figure this out,...
Co-Intelligence : Take-Aways
I recently finished reading Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick. I was very eager to read this book, as Ethan continually posts fantastic LLM content on Twitter...
Leadership in startup companies
I’ve spent most of my career in small-ish VC-backed startup companies, with between 10 and 150 people. Things tend to move and change fast in small companies...
Why I want to write
I’ve recently built a desire to write more, and wanted to dig into why I am feeling this way. What are my reasons and goals? A big part of this desire is roo...
Minimum Viable Competence
There is an endless amount of stuff in the world to learn, and not enough time to learn it. The demands of modern work nudge us to build skills in a very spe...
Explaining LLMs to non-technical people
Explaining how things work to different audiences is a topic that interests me. Can you put yourself in the mind-space of the person you’re speaking with — a...
Being present
Last month, during a visit to the Apple Store, I experienced an unexpected nudge towards being present — a concept I encounter frequently in books I’ve read....
Being a good dad
I want to be a great dad. It’s not easy. Being a dad is the biggest privilege and opportunity in my life. As a parent, you have huge responsibility in the ac...
A small thought on focus
Everything competes for your attention The most recent thing seems like the most important Without a framework for what you pay attention to, what hap...
Top Books From 2013
At the beginning of 2013, I made a resolution to learn more things outside of Technology. In the past, I’ve been a semi-active reader, finishing about 15 boo...
Stubbornness and Resiliency
Why default-resiliency is not the best option
The Truth and Shackleton
‘What should we tell them?’ How about the truth.
Product smells and sniff tests
Thoughts on ‘Product strategy means saying NO’
How to hack taking advice
Thoughts on being malleable instead of magnetic
Artificial Progress
Thoughts on doing ‘things about the thing’ instead of the thing itself
I’ve Done This Before
… can be a dangerous attitude to have when trying to solve a problem.
My bank password is ‘sort-of’ hashed
Yesterday, I called Fidelity to get help with my account. Before I was connected to a human, I was asked to enter my username, and then my password using the...
Seeking affirmation of your product idea can be dangerous
I often cringe when I hear people say they are ‘getting out of the building’ to test their product idea. At the core, ‘getting out of the building’ is a prox...
Confusing what you’re good at with what needs to be done
When you work at a big company, your role is specialized. On a day-to-day basis, you don’t have to venture far from your ‘comfort zone’ of core skills to acc...
The Complexity Versus Value Trap
There is not a linear relationship between the complexity of a product’s features and the product’s value to an end user. The graph of complexity versus valu...
A Student of the Business Model Generation
I am a new student of the Business Model Generation. I’m working to understand and apply the tools and techniques outlined by key influencers such as Steve B...
Reflections on reading ‘business books’ as an Engineer
I’ve always appreciated a good non-fiction book. My preferred reading ‘categories’ are behavioral economics (e.g. Ariely, Thaler, Dubner, Gladwell), analyses...
Where did this month go? And don’t optimize!
People have told me that it isn’t easy to keep up a blog. Now I know what they mean! Somehow, I’ve gone an entire month without posting anything — time seems...
Applying Amdahl’s Law to Your Life
Ok, I admit it…this may qualify as the nerdiest / lamest name for a blog post…ever…in the history of the blogosphere…but hear me out on this one, because I’m...
Learning from the Financial Crisis
Over the last 5 years since I began working full-time, I have developed a strong interest in investing in the stock market. I started investing in mutual fun...
What’s at the CORE
The bloggers over at Newly Corporate are asking “What 1 or 2 CORE traits get you noticed at work or help you succeed in your day-to-day operations” Here is t...
Habits of a Rockstar Software Engineer
Every day, a software project dies. Some die a slow, painful, expensive, death. Others die a quick, not painless, and relatively embarrassing death. As Sof...