first blog, kinda nervous

Hi! shyly

Thanks for coming here. I wonder who you are. I wonder who I’m talking to. Perhaps it’s just me, for the zillionth time checking out my own website. That’s cool too.

I’m not entirely sure what this will become — probably a mix of whatever I’m thinking about at any given time. Things I’m learning, things I’m building, things I’m reading. Maybe some math, maybe some code, maybe just words. Probably a mixture of all.

Why did I do this anyways?

I have a lot of ideas. I like journalling. However, how do I have people challenge my opinions? My current fallback (don’t laugh) was AI tools. Turns out, given a good enough system prompt, these things can mimic objectivity pretty well; a way to dissect my thinking. But, at the end of the day, and no matter how much I enjoy using these tools and how much potential I believe them to have in the future direction of society (smells like it’s own blog post), they’re not real people.

To those who know me, it might seem a bit counter-intuitive. You might know me as ‘the AI guy’. It’s not mutually exclusive to hold these two ideas together though. I think they actually compound on each other. Because of how integrated AI will become in our lives, it is even more important to understand the embodiment of our humanity. What can’t these models do?

I want to be better

And how do I do that if I never engage with anyone on my opinions? I am scared. I am scared that the blogs I write will be bad. That somebody who is more technical than me will find logical contradictions in my math, incorrect assumptions in my code. It is scary to put yourself out there. I have let this fear overcome me a long time. Rejection is scary. But I learned something last year.

Rejection of your authentic self feels so much better than acceptance of a mask you put on.

The rejection I felt when I held nothing back — it was amazing. I didn’t feel upset. The outcome didn’t seem binary. It felt like… two pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit each other. There’s nothing objectively wrong about either, so why do I treat my life like that? On the hamster wheel of eternal improvement, there can be no space for refusal of rejection. The wheel runs on rejection.

What’s up next

I have a few blogs in mind. A couple series, perhaps. I don’t like fake promises, but I am certain enough in my desire to let you know one upcoming one. I am learning CUDA right now. Pretty soon, I will write one about the current project I am working on. It will be very learning heavy. If you are at all interested in learning more about CUDA and transformers hint hint, you might enjoy it. I gotta set up some email lists soon, but for now, just check back in :)