”Your slippers last a lot longer in your bedroom. On a film set, they do get very scuffed up.” Martin Freeman
Previously at the Volcano Base, I’d had my first “good” week since starting this venture back in December. This last week has been, surprisingly, even better.
Mission Briefing
Quantum of Slipper
I was twatting about on my iPad earlier this week when I had a long-lost sensation. It was a delightful happy-excited cocktail. This was nothing to do with bezelled edges or gorilla glass. No, this was mainly due to the fine people at Deft and Extra Brain.
I’m working on some super-cool, juicy AI/automation stuff with these guys and I really-want-to-tell-you-all-about-it! That’s what this section of the newsletter has become: the brutal honesty section. But, you know how it is - NDAs and, well, just professional courtesy, isn’t it. If I was helping you with something serious, you probably wouldn’t want me to, oh I don’t know, put it in a newsletter for hundreds of people to read while on the loo. And then publish it on the internet. And then try to get other people to read it.
Reconnecting with Ian at Deft, and Jess and Dan at Extra Brain has been lovely. And exciting. Like slipping on a pair of comfortable slippers, that are actually Quantum Slippers that whisk you suddenly away to a surprise parallel dimension. You know the type.
Otherwise, I’ve got several interesting chats coming up. I figure I’ll just talk to whoever wants to talk to me, and see if they’ve got a problem I can solve. I’m less interested in problems I can’t solve. They’re just problems, and problems are generally negative things, despite the advice you sometimes hear to “fall in love with your customer’s problems”. Bit weird.
I feel like I should be putting in something more useful here, about WTF is going on with AI, some useful “how-tos”, pointers to cool things to try. Could stick a survey in, I suppose, to find out if that’s the sort of stuff you want.
Or you could just reply and tell me what you want to know about. Yes, let’s go analogue.
In the meantime, here’s some interesting stuff…
Classified Intel
Some interesting stuff I discovered on my adventures.
Looks like useful quantum computing could be with us in years, rather than decades. Blimey. Quantum Computing?! Let me get this whole artificial intelligence thing sorted first, please. Innovation has no consideration. Microsoft has created a chip that “taps into an entirely new state of matter existing beyond the traditional solid, liquid or gas stage”. It’s called a topological state. A bit like you feel on Mondays sometimes.
Microsoft is getting all the attention this week. Not content with creating a form of inter-dimensional computing, they’ve also been playing video games. Muse is the first World and Human Action Model. WHAM. They went with “Wham”, but note the lack of exclamation mark for copyright reasons. I understand Google has something similar called KAJAGOOGOO, but I’ve no idea what it stands for. The model can generate video games, and then play them. Wonder if it can also order a pizza. Probably could.
Come on now. Everything’s going a bit Star Trek. The biggest ever AI model for biology can write DNA on demand. You know, whole chromosomes and small genomes. Not entire entities. Yet. In theory, Evo (that’s its name) might be able to write genomes that don’t exist. So… can’t think of any potential downsides to this at all.
Get unlimited 1:1 advisory calls with yours truly
