On AI Agentic Workflows

Amazing conversation with Bret Taylor on agentic workflows leveraging AI in the enterprises. The whole conversation is worth listening to multiple times, but this specific segment where Bret speaks about the difference between traditional software engineering and AI driven solutions was thought provoking on how much change management organizations have to go through to adopt to these new solutions.

Now if you have parts of your system that are built on large language models, those parts are really different than most of the software that we’ve built on in the past. Number one is they’re relatively slow compared — to generate a page view on a website takes nanoseconds at this point, might be slightly exaggerating, down to milliseconds, even with the fastest models, it’s quite slow in the way tokens are emitted.

Number two is it can be relatively expensive. And again, it really varies based on the number of parameters in the model. But again, the marginal cost of that page view is almost zero at this point. You don’t think about it. Your cost as a software platform is almost exclusively in your head count. With AI, you can see the margin pressure that a lot of companies face, particularly of their training models or even doing inference with high-parameter-count models.

Number three is they’re nondeterministic fundamentally, and you can tune certain models to more reliably have the same output for the same input. But by and large, it’s hard to reproduce behaviors on these systems. What gives them creativity also leads to non-determinism.

And so this combination of it, we’ve gone from cheap, deterministic, reliable systems to relatively slow, relatively expensive but very creative systems. And I think it violates a lot of the conventions that software engineers think about — have grown to think about when producing software, and it becomes almost a statistical problem rather than just a methodological problem.

Overheard : Leadership

Leadership isn’t about being the hero. It’s about empowering your team to become heroes themselves.

Google Gemini

For folks that are driven, wired to see an issue and tackle it head-on, it is difficult to not jump in and “try” to help your team whenever they run into an issue. But the reality is that most folks are capable, creative individuals. They just need the space to flex their own problem-solving muscles.

If you team has the skills and experience, let them handle it :-).

Charlie : The guru I never met

Yesterday (Nov 28, 2023), the world lost a giant of investing and clear thinking: Charlie Munger. While I never had the privilege of meeting him in person, his wisdom, wit, and down-to-earth approach to life have had a profound impact on me. His speeches and writings have been a guiding light, teaching me not just about investing, but about life itself.

Charlie possessed a rare combination of intelligence, practicality, and brutal honesty. He never sugarcoated his words, always offering his insights with clarity and directness. One quote that particularly resonates with me comes from his 2007 commencement speech at USC. Reflecting on choices in life, he said:
“Let me use a little inversion now. What will really fail in life? What do we want to avoid? Some answers are easy. For example, sloth and unreliability will fail. If you’re unreliable it doesn’t matter what your virtues are, you’re going to crater immediately. So, faithfully doing what you’ve engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct.”

These words underscore the importance of basic principles like hard work, integrity, and commitment. Charlie understood that success wasn’t built on complex theories, but on a foundation of solid values and consistent action.

Charlie’s passing is a significant loss, but his legacy will undoubtedly continue to inspire and educate generations to come. His wisdom will remain a guiding force for those seeking to navigate the complexities of life and investing with integrity and a clear mind.

Rest in peace, Charlie. You will be deeply missed.

HOWTO : Bulk deletes in vi

Use “dG” command, if you want to delete all lines in a file starting from the line under the cursor in vi.

Additional commands to delete lines

  1. dd deletes the whole line under the cursor.
  2. xdd deletes multiple (x) lines, starting at the cursor. For example 10dd deletes 10 lines
  3. d$ deletes to the end of the line, starting at the cursor.