Summer is over, Fall isn’t here yet, it’s Friday. #
Pumpkin patches and spicy lattes and haunted houses, oh my! #
A friend/colleague messaged me this morning asking if I’d ever been to the Spina Farms Pumpkin Patch. I pass it on my way home and love watching the place take shape, from the rows of pumpkins planted and growing in the fields, to the stacks of hay that are gathered in preparation, to the enormous pyramid that they put into place, and of course the flowers, train, corn maze, and enormous Godzilla figure along with the army of dinosaurs that they’ve expanded this year. I have not been, but I’m tempted to go this year. I actually posted about it the other day on my Mastodon account.
There have been a few days when I’ve made the mistake of taking Hale Ave home on a weekend and found myself stuck on Bailey/Hale due to the impacted traffic on the road which offers no opportunity for through traffic to pass- just one example of seasonal infrastructure impact on a growing municipality.
Of course, one of the things I look forward to each year in the neighborhood is Mike’s Halloween decorations, which are a cacophony of noise and light and jump scares that he puts together on his little front yard for at least as long as I’ve been living here (2019) and I imagine much longer.
Inevitably there are going to be more days that get into the high 90s before the the season truly turns. Yesterday was up to 92 and Tuesday is looking to be 99. Despite having lived through 43 such “Indian Summers”, I still fool myself into thinking that “It’s finally sweater weather!” at least 4 weeks too early. And I’m sure that in the coming years, those heat waves will extend even further into the fall.
What’s been on my mind? #
OpenAI’s o1 ‘model’ is just layers of compute cycles #
In a classic ’lipstick on a pig’ move, OpenAI released o1, which claims to go through a ‘reasoning’ process when processing responses. This does, in fact, result in better bullshit on the other end. It essentially creates one response, then checks its own work, then modifies it, in a layered series of response cycles. Okay, fine. But how much more energy does all of this require? Do we know? Is OpenAI required to know, or disclose this information? It appears that even the companies behind the compute don’t know. As we continue headlong into a future where it is accepted as truth that humanity needs to reduct our carbon footprint to stem the impacts of the climate crisis, the hockey stick of energy demand from this shiny new toy called Generative AI is going to prove to be a new hurdle to our ability and willingness to take the necessary measures to reduce that footprint. It looks more and more like a footprint that would have been left by Godzilla as he rampages through Tokyo (or just a pumpkin patch), destroying all in his path.
It feels like we are speeding right past another tipping point here. The speed limit is 45 and we’re finding ourselves pushing 95 on an unfinished highway, hoping that the road ahead of us gets built before we arrive. This is evident in some of the actions by Microsoft (disclosure: I’m an employee of LinkedIn, owned by MSFT) to buy the power plant at Three Mile Island (MIT Technology Review). This move to nuclear may not actually be a bad thing, but I think that starting an engine that you know for a fact will demand more fuel than you can ethically account for is reckless and greedy. But so many people are dazzled by the promise of AI and what it ‘could do in the future’, which I’m extremely skeptical of. Sure, it will give you information in the form of a plausible answer, but the added cognitive and temporal overhead for learning and maintaining the systems proposed, the lack of verifiable results, the ethical issues with training data, and of course the aforementioned energy consumption are very difficult to look past, only for the promise of an agent that manages my calendar for me. I have extremely mixed feelings.
Community may be just around the corner #
On a more positive note, my wife and I have been making efforts to connect with more people in our immediate community. She’s starting a meetup group which will get together on Sunday, and we’ve been looking at local events, other groups to join, and just generally being open to any of the classic ways to build connections with others. We went to the library’s “Tote Painting Party” on Tuesday and sat with several others who were there for the same reason: they were having trouble making connections and were looking for community.
I need another tote bag like I need another little toe, but that’s beside the point. I guess the point I’m stumbling into is that the real tote bags are the friends we made along the way.
RTO next week #
Like many other companies, my employer LinkedIn is requiring us to be in the office on certain days. It’s a change, it will have challenges (mostly traffic) and will take some adjustments. I’m hoping to take advantage once again of the Caltrain and some of the other transportation options available. Though limited, they are reliable. As for the effect on my work, I’m looking forward to the increased in-person collaboration that should come with the time. Plus the separation of work and personal spaces continues to be a challenge when I work at home, so I’m ready to leave the work at the door when I shut the laptop. We’ll see how it goes!
Have a great weekend, take care of yourself, and watch out for the Giant Pumpkin.