Award-Winning Journalist & Speaker - Expert in ERISA Fiduciary, Child IRA, and Hamburger History
When generative artificial intelligence (“GenAI”) platforms first appeared, I tried them all. GenAI fails—but not in the way you’re thinking. They failed to collect the data I requested. Quite simply, the platforms couldn’t search the internet that well.
Ah, 2024. Those were the good old days…
Code that tapped LLMs did achieve—a bit—what I wanted, but the inconsistency drove me Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part V: Why GenAI (And All Search Engines) Fail”
Dawn’s glow broke at 5:30 am, heralding my latest side hustle juggle. As the sun peeked above the horizon, the whine of the laser printers wound down. The parlor-converted-into-a-newsroom fell silent, but the hot, inky tang of the freshly printed pages lingered. The pages themselves sat neatly arranged on the brightly lit layout table. Hours earlier, my co-publisher scoffed, ‘Chris, it’s impossible,’ and left for bed. Her husband stayed to help finish a job that couldn’t be finished.
The paper was done. The deadline achieved. The fumes of adrenaline pumped through my veins. Juggling a newspaper, a job, and grad school, sleepless for twenty-four hours, most people would have flopped into bed at this point. I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
Everything was working just as the system promised. An outside observer would not have Continue Reading “The Side Hustle Juggle: How A Fair Game Taught Me The Secret To A Happy Life (Part II)”
Many years ago, I sat in a strategic planning session for our local school district. My kids were young, not even in school yet. My participation represented a legacy of sorts. When I served on the Town Board, I was the youngest member by a generation or two. They figured that made me the perfect person to serve as liaison between the Town Board and the School Board. I soon found myself sitting on quite a few school committees, from capital projects to technology.
This strategic planning committee was a little different. For one thing, it was ad hoc. For another, it involved a lot of big mucky mucks from every facet of the school district. Still closer to my twenties than my forties, I kept my mouth shut for the most part. Oddly, despite my Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part IV: Curses! Foiled Again!”
If you recall from past columns in this space, you might remember one of the first things I did during my second run at publishing this esteemed periodical was to replace myself.
Allow me to explain.
Among the software we found buried deep within the bowels of one of the two extremely outdated computers we inherited was an ancient DBase III program. For those not old enough to recognize the name or even the purpose of that old code, it allowed you to collect and update a customized database you could then manipulate in any way you desired. I installed this program in 1989 when we started the newspaper. I then created a database in which we could keep our subscriptions on. We used it not only to know when people needed to renew but also to print out the mailing labels to attach to the newspapers every week.
Nearly thirty years later, the previous owners of the Sentinel were still using this archaic software. The very first thing I did was extract the data (into a comma-delimited file for all you nerds out there), which I promptly imported into an Excel spreadsheet. From that spreadsheet, I wrote a mail-list merge routine in Word to print out the mailing labels.
And with that, I had replaced myself. (For those keeping score at home—and who notice how Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part III: What Comes Around Goes Around”
If you stumbled upon this without reading Part I first, you can read it here.
I always had a certain curiosity (there’s that word again) with the idea of artificial intelligence. You can’t blame science fiction for this. It was simply the challenge. Artificial intelligence represents the Holy Grail of mathematics. It’s not simply ramming a bunch of formulas through faster and faster processors. It’s going a step beyond. It’s giving the computer a basic set of instructions, then allowing it to begin programming itself by building on top of that foundation.
Naturally, I monitored the subject. This is one reason I knew about the Boston-based investment adviser BatteryMarch, although, technically, it wasn’t artificial intelligence; it was just another example of brute force processing. For the inside dope on AI, I didn’t rely on the Wall Street Journal or even the data processing trade press. No, I paid attention to Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part II: The Search For The Holy Grail”
The lure of artificial intelligence (or “AI”) enticed me. But let’s not get ahead of the story.
For reasons that aren’t important right now, I spent my high school years channeling my inner Spock. Relying on logic to drive your life rather than the vicissitudes of emotion made things quite amazing. Today we’d call it going down rabbit holes. Back then, I merely explored wherever my curiosity took me.
“Hold on!” you’re saying, “isn’t ‘curiosity’ an emotion?”
Well, some psychologists might agree, (see Litman, “The Measurement of Curiosity As a Feeling of Deprivation,” Journal of Personality Assessment, 82(2), 147-157). Spock merely uses it as a statement of fact. In Episode 26 of Season 1, “Errand of Mercy,” in Star Trek—The Original Series, he says, “It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.”
There is an intersection between Litman (who says curiosity is a “motivation”) and Spock’s use of the term. Think of what happens when you hear a strange noise on the other side Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part I: Early Geekdom”
Did you ever have a dream you kept putting off? A place you always wanted to visit? A story you always wanted to tell?
So did I. (Notice the past tense.)
This site might give you a clue about how I accomplished this. Who knows? It may even reveal to you how you can realize your own greatest goals.
Interested in learning more? Find me on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed.
You cannot copy content of this page
My Life With AI—Part VI: How To Spot AI Content – Or – Apparently, I Am A Robot
Financial professionals often have public footprints. I find them by perusing firm bios, scrolling LinkedIn’s polished profiles, and searching for prior quotes. A business email helps, too. I rarely consider replies from generic addresses like Gmail or Yahoo.
The problem isn’t the people. It’s their answers. Are they genuine—or pasted from a GenAI platform?
Last Monday, I opened an email from a “retirement planning expert” responding to my Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part VI: How To Spot AI Content – Or – Apparently, I Am A Robot”