Elliot C Smith (Page 3)

Elliot C Smith

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A look back at twenty years of writing code

In one way or another, I have been writing code for the last two decades. If I am being honest with you, dear reader, I can't pinpoint the exact time I wrote my first software, but it is close enough to twenty years to take some poetic license

Findings #8

🍅 From the Web The world seems to be on a little bit of rocky footing right now, especially when it comes to the economy. That does little to stop some amazing breakthroughs in science. This week I came across this paper from Nature Plants. Biofortified tomatoes provide a new route

Findings #7

From the web Some of the bigger news in the AI world this last week has been the release of DeepMind's new Gato model. Borrowing from the original post (linked below): The agent, which we refer to as Gato, works as a multi-modal, multi-task, multi-embodiment generalist policy. The

Findings #6

Another week, another collection of interesting things from around the internet. This week has been a little wild across stock markets and general sentiment. I hope you're not being hit too hard. If you enjoy this, consider subscribing or sending it to a friend. From Around the Web

We are linear minds in an exponential world

I remember reading about an experiment long ago. Participants were shown a bar. This bar was supposed to represent the numbers 1 to 1,000,000. The researchers asked each participant to mark where 1,000 would appear on the line. Have a go yourself, gut feeling only. Take a

Findings #5

Hello again. Another edition of findings. I hope you're enjoying these. If you are, consider subscribing to get them straight to your inbox. From the Web First, is an article that has been on my to-read list for a while. The recent string of long weekends gave me

Findings #4

Welcome back to another week. There was a lot happening this past week, including the much-discussed purchase of Twitter. One of the promises I found particularly interesting was the promise to open source the timeline algorithm. More on that later. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the web I found myself back on a

Collaborative AI as a path to AGI

Let's say you made a time machine, and the catch is you can only bring people forward from the past. You turn it on and zap a dozen people into the room from 1800. Given enough time to catch up on the language and the latest in education,

Findings #3

Hello again. This one is coming a day later than usual as I took a little time to unwind over the long weekend. I hope you all had some time to relax as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This week I was sent some interesting news on a new AI system that has

Findings #2

Welcome back to the second edition of Findings. A short collection of interesting things I found last week. If you found this interesting, consider subscribing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From around the web The first article for this week is a post from a patient undergoing a clinical trial for a new device

Little by little, then all at once

When I was a kid, I played a lot of Age of Empires. My favourite moment was gathering enough resources to move to the next 'age'. When I did, suddenly, dozens of new upgrades were available that transformed my city and its citizens. Within a few clicks, I

Findings #1

Hey, I'm adding something new to my roster of content. Once a week I'll post a quick update on interesting articles, videos, and general content from last week. It will be in theme for the rest of my content so you should find it interesting. If

Will we mourn for Siri?

Will we mourn for Siri?

I remember the first time I said "thank you" to Siri. I wasn't paying attention and had asked for a timer to be set. Nothing particularly difficult, but without much thought, out slipped "thank you". To be clear, I don't think Siri

Unbundling health on the path to value-based care

Unbundling health on the path to value-based care

Introduction Live long enough, and you're bound to see familiar businesses unbundle and bundle back up. Jim Barksdale famously said that these are the only two ways to make money in business. Different factors drive these processes, but they often come at a time of technological innovation. There

Can AI help when it's "more of an art than a science"?

Even within technical fields, people describe specific tasks as "more of an art than a science". Within the context of AI, many will claim that AI can do the 'science' but not the 'art'. This begs the question of what art and science entail.

Personalisation and Curation

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-ive-done

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

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

things-ive-done

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