Praveen Puri

Friday, June 7, 2024

Interesting Connection 2

Elon Musk launched a new AI company (xAI - he's fascinated by the letter X), and it raised a lot of money in a short time. Why?

Because he also owns Tesla and X (nee Twitter), which gives his AI models a big advantage in training data (tweets, file from Tesla cameras, etc).
© 2024 Praveen Puri

Interesting Connection 1

Did you now that, outside the main bull fighting stadium in Madrid, there is a statue dedicated to Alexander Fleming?

Why? His invention of penicillin saved countless bullfighters.

Wednesday, June 5, 2024

The Mythical Man-Month

When a project is falling behind, beware the seductive idea of simply increasing manpower. Adding bodies doesn't scale for knowledge workers.

For example,

Adding more farm workers to pick wheat is productive because the work can be divided and they don't have to communicate with each other.

Adding more programmers to a project falling behind does not increase productivity because they have to communicate / coordinate / share constraints.

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Three Ways to Be An Innovative Leader in Your Field

1. You have to learn, learn, learn. If you don't have the passion to read and learn outside of work, you should find another field because you won't be an innovative leader. Also, learn in adjacent areas. for example, if your field is healthcare, also learn and be curious in technology and consumer care.

2. Use data. You don't have to be a data scientist. You can work with programmers and data experts, who can help you put together the queries. The main skills you need is the ability to think up the queries by thinking about cause, effect, and relationships between measures, and testing your hypothesis.

3. Set both clear (in pen) and "in pencil" goals. For example, if you're in health care, set the clear goal of identifying a way to kill a certain cancer cell. But, then you want to set an "in pencil" sub-goal, such as can substance X affect the cancer cell. Because, then you want to test this hypothesis, and either pursue it further or quickly discard it (fail fast). "in pencil" means don't be wedded to it, and be willing to pivot based on the evidence.

Monday, May 27, 2024

Go Team Go!

The Economist had an article about how researchers are now working on building teams of chatbots. These open up more powerful opportunities than single chatbots.

The bots can self-organize, assign each other tasks, and review each other's work.

Latest Fortune Cookie Advice

"Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it."

- From today's fortune cookie

Thursday, May 23, 2024

Actual Execution Should Be Thoughtless

You need to strategize and plan, so that you take the right action. But, when you actually take action, you have to not think, and just execute, if you want to be successful.

I noticed this when I threw a crumpled paper into the garage can. I made the shot because I didn't aim, or think about whether I would make it in. My mind was a void, and I just tossed it in.