Month: March 2023
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The problem with APIs
The problem with APIs is that they are dead — they just sit there like an Easter egg waiting to be discovered, and once found, waiting to be asked a question, and then (maybe) they respond with an answer. This dead-ness then permeates all the things we try to do with APIs, from building applications…
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Taylorism and Software Manufacturing
When we make software like it is a commodity that is manufactured, and that can be managed like a manufactured product, we are bringing in all the baggage of Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s ideas that dehumanize the labor force in service of an efficiency-centric view of labor productivity. The first problem with that is that creative…
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Thoughts on the inevitable attempts by organizations to control the use of LLMs by their members
This is a quick run-down of the major concerns I’ve heard voiced by organizations — mostly corporations and schools — about Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, and to a lessor extent about generative neural networks (gNNs) like Midjourney. It is admittedly cynical in the sense that taken together it sounds somewhat defeatist, but also…