Writing

Recent Posts

Common Maxims - LLM Remix

7 minute read

Today I got access to OpenAI’s o1 pro, a specialized model within the ChatGPT Pro lineup, designed for complex reasoning tasks. It’s particularly effective f...

A Thought Experiment with ChatGPT’s Memory

7 minute read

One corner of AI Twitter that’s been catching my attention is where people share prompts designed to get ChatGPT to reflect on specific things about you. The...

Reasoning with o1 - Course Breakdown

5 minute read

I took the Reasoning with o1 short course led by Colin Jarvis at OpenAI. At just over an hour long, it’s a concise introduction to a few things that o1 is pa...

Trying Out O1 for Portfolio Construction

7 minute read

OpenAI recently released their O1 model, and I’ve been following the early feedback closely. A tweet from Deedy Das caught my attention, stating that O1 Prev...

Building a Book That Didn’t Exist

2 minute read

Andrej Karpathy had a question: What would the Founding Fathers think about America today? He couldn’t find a book that explored it, so he built one himself ...

Trying Gemini Flash 2.0’s Screen Interaction

2 minute read

One of my main beliefs about large language models is that they enable people to learn interesting concepts on their own terms, in their own ways, unlocking ...

How Large Language Models Work at a High Level

3 minute read

Recently, I watched a fantastic 3Blue1Brown video on large language models that does an excellent job of demystifying the technology. The video is under 10 m...

Distilling Financial Advice With LLMs

3 minute read

In my last post , I shared a detailed plan for swapping assets between a taxable and a tax-deferred account to optimize tax efficiency. I used an LLM to buil...

High-Conviction Bets

2 minute read

I recently listened to Stanley Druckenmiller recount his British Pound trade on a podcast, and it really stuck with me. It’s a great example of how clear evi...

Cheat Codes for Life: Experimenting with LLMs

2 minute read

Today, I came across a tweet by Alex McCaw asking what topics young adults should learn but aren’t typically taught. This sparked an idea: what could large l...

How I Use LLMs for Self-Guided Learning

2 minute read

I’m excited about using AI tools for self-guided learning — it’s one of my highest-conviction use cases for this technology. I wrote about this before, but t...

Anthropic Demo for LLM Text Classification

2 minute read

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...

My Takes On AI

4 minute read

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

2 minute read

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...

Notes From Google’s Prompt Tuning Playbook

3 minute read

Varun Godbole and his team at Google recently released an excellent prompt tuning playbook, packed with practical advice. Varun, a core contributor to Gemini...

Bringing Clear Communication to AI-Driven Teams

4 minute read

Clear communication is critical for effective teams. Using simple, precise language helps bridge gaps across roles. Clear language enables everyone to contri...

Testing Your Prompts - Writing LLM Evals

4 minute read

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

7 minute read

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...

Custom Podcasts with NotebookLM

2 minute read

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

4 minute read

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

3 minute read

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...

Investing With Language Models

4 minute read

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...

Building Custom GPTs

4 minute read

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

3 minute read

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

4 minute read

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, ...

What I look for when hiring teammates

2 minute read

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...

Prompt Engineering Quickstart

5 minute read

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

7 minute read

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 ...

Co-Intelligence : Take-Aways

5 minute read

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

5 minute read

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

2 minute read

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

1 minute read

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

2 minute read

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

1 minute read

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

3 minute read

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

less than 1 minute read

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

8 minute read

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...

Artificial Progress

3 minute read

Thoughts on doing ‘things about the thing’ instead of the thing itself

I’ve Done This Before

1 minute read

… can be a dangerous attitude to have when trying to solve a problem.

My bank password is ‘sort-of’ hashed

3 minute read

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...

The Complexity Versus Value Trap

4 minute read

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

3 minute read

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...

Where did this month go? And don’t optimize!

2 minute read

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

4 minute read

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

5 minute read

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

1 minute read

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

4 minute read

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...