How to Set AI Goals
AI Benefits and Stakeholders AI is a field where value, in the form of outcomes and their resulting benefits, is created by machines exhibiting the ability to learn and “understand,”…
Continue Reading How to Set AI Goals
Pair Programming with AI
In a conversation with Kevlin Henney, we started talking about the kinds of user interfaces that might work for AI-assisted programming. This is a significant problem: neither of us were…
Continue Reading Pair Programming with AI
Why Best-of-Breed is a Better Choice than All-in-One Platforms for Data Science
So you need to redesign your company’s data infrastructure. Do you buy a solution from a big integration company like IBM, Cloudera, or Amazon? Do you engage many small startups,…
Continue Reading Why Best-of-Breed is a Better Choice than All-in-One Platforms for Data Science
Bringing an AI Product to Market
The Core Responsibilities of the AI Product Manager Product Managers are responsible for the successful development, testing, release, and adoption of a product, and for leading the team that implements…
Continue Reading Bringing an AI Product to Market
Power, Harms, and Data
A recent article in The Verge discussed PULSE, an algorithm for “upsampling” digital images. PULSE, when applied to a low-resolution image of Barack Obama, recreated a White man’s face; applied…
Continue Reading Power, Harms, and Data
AI, Protests, and Justice
Largely on the impetus of the Black Lives Matter movement, the public’s response to the murder of George Floyd, and the subsequent demonstrations, we’ve seen increased concern about the use…
Continue Reading AI, Protests, and Justice
COVID-19 and Complex Systems
In various mailing lists about the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve seen several discussions of “complex systems theory” as, possibly, a way to understand how the pandemic is playing out in different…
Continue Reading COVID-19 and Complex Systems
Decision-Making in a Time of Crisis
In the 1996 cult classic film Swingers, two friends, Trent and Mike (played by Vince Vaughan and Jon Favreau, respectively) make an impromptu trip to Las Vegas. At the blackjack…
Continue Reading Decision-Making in a Time of Crisis
Machine Learning and the Production Gap
The biggest problem facing machine learning today isn’t the need for better algorithms; it isn’t the need for more computing power to train models; it isn’t even the need for…
Continue Reading Machine Learning and the Production Gap
Reclaiming the stories that algorithms tell
Algorithms tell stories about who people are. The first story an algorithm told about me was that my life was in danger. It was 7:53 pm on a clear Monday…
Continue Reading Reclaiming the stories that algorithms tell