Who’s the agent now?
An inanimate agent is defined by its independence while a human agent is defined by its service of another.
Dan Turkel (dot com)
Latest posts
The obligatory “How I'm using LLMs” post
I like to think I’m an LLM moderate now: I try to leverage their strengths while keeping an eye out for their weaknesses, and I stay abreast of advancements with cautious optimism.
Teaching machines to understand
What took us from Vannevar Bush’s vision of “memex” to ChatGPT? Vectors, mostly.
Brooklyn, summer 2017
Taken in and around Crown Heights, New York, in the summer of 2017. Kodak Ultramax 400 film in a Canon AE-1 Program. Minimally post-processed.
Paris, spring 2024
Taken in Paris in April 2024 on a Nikon D7200.
Amsterdam, spring 2024
Taken in Amsterdam in April 2024 on a Nikon D7200.
Ethical AI in The New Yorker (and elsewhere)
I wrote a letter published in The New Yorker hoping to highlight that debates over responsible use of AI are not all about doomsday scenarios. Many researchers and practitioners are focused on mitigating real-world harms happening today.
Data science: From classroom to industry
Most of what I’ve learned about being a data scientist has come from hard-won lessons on the job. This post aims to help fill in some of the gap between what you learn about data science in a textbook and what it takes to be an effective data professional in industry.
Highlights from KDD 2023
In August I attended KDD in Long Beach, California. I watched more than 50 paper talks, plus keynotes, invited talks, and workshops—and I still ended up missing several things I wanted to see. In this post, I’ll give an overview of what I saw and run down some of my favorite papers and talks from the conference.
Math and code for Are You the One?
I have an unusual fondness for the reality TV dating show Are You the One? What appeals to me is not (just) the drama and drunken antics of watching a bunch of twenty-somethings compete for love and screen-time. What I really like is the math.
What I learned through Advent of Code 2022
Some Python tricks, algorithms, best practices, and more that I picked up during AoC 2022.
Late 2016, early 2017
Taken in and around Crown Heights, New York, roughly around the end of 2016 and start of 2017. Kodak Ultramax 400 film in a Nikon N65. Gently post-processed.
Goals for 2022
I’m typically pretty averse to making “new year’s resolutions,” but in the spirit of learning in public and holding myself accountable, I figured I’d put a few goals out there that I can check in against throughout the year.
Belated highlights from RecSys 2021
RecSys focuses on all things related to recommender systems: models which (roughly speaking) predict what items a user will like. Not only are recommenders what I’ve been working on for the last couple of years, but it’s also a topic I find personally fascinating, and I hope you will too.
Watch this space
Eye of Maria Miles Heyward (c. 1802) by Edward Greene Malbone, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art . Pretty soon I’ll be launching a new blog around these parts, so keep your eyes peeled. If you want to make sure you don’t miss out, feel free to subscribe to …