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Elliot Smith

Personalisation and Curation

When I'm out of town and looking for somewhere to eat I open maps and pick somewhere near by with enough stars to lessen fears of food poisoning. These ratings come from humans that have been there and wanted to voice their opinion. Ignoring selection bias, the star

AI will come for knowledge work, 3 ways we might respond.

AI will eat the world Given enough time and compute resources, AI will replace 90% of the knowledge work we do today. At the current rate of automation that time may be shorter than we think. The 90% that is replaced by AI will be the simpler things, repetitive well

The importance of picking the right loss function

I don't know if Drucker thought a lot about artificial intelligence but he could have been when he said, 'what gets measured, gets managed. AI models learn through a repeated effort to minimise error. How we define error can wildly change how an AI learns and how

Debaters, Inflaters and the polarisation of online discussion.

The foundation of good science is debate decoupled from people. Debaters take data, present conclusions and discuss their meaning in the real world. Debaters don't tie their ego to outcomes when the discussion happens in a trusted environment. An idea can be bad, wrong or invalid without saying

Things I've Done: My PhD

In contrast to my post about Pepster [https://www.elliotcsmith.com/things-pepster/], this isn't going to be a year-by-year timeline for my research. Anyone who has done a Ph.D. can probably attest to the sporadic nature of getting from start to finish. Instead, this will be a

AI and Helmer's 7 Powers

Artificial Intelligence has made its way past the hype and into a lot of products. I've been working on AI in healthcare since 2016 as a founder of Maxwell Plus [https://maxwellplus.com]. I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly but still believe that

Funhouse Mirrors

We spend most of our lives wandering a house of distorted mirrors. The people we meet, and their interactions with us, project reflection of ourselves. Distorted in many different ways. Our focus shifts from them to us. We compare what we are seeing in that reflection to what we know

Innovation Doesn't Work That Way

The technologist in me believes that the innovation that dominates is the one that's most needed. The rationalist in me knows that's a lie. Innovation, especially consumer facing innovation is driven only partially through need. The much stronger force at play is what social labels the

Things I've Done: Pepster

Cutting myself some slack towards the goal of being prolific I felt it would be a good exercise to catalog some of the things I have worked on over the years. A public record and a reflection with some hindsight. Pepster - An app and device for kids with cystic

Prolific

I want to be prolific. There is something inside me that has an almost insatiable need to make things. I have a feeling that if I can grasp that feeling and run with it, I could get there. I have some baggage to shed in that pursuit but it feels