AI Bloggers and Sabbaticals

Hey, how are you? It has been a while!

It will probably be quite a shock, but I have an absolutely unique explanation for why I haven't been keeping in touch: I have been busy. I know; this never happens to anyone else. But what I have been busy with is quite interesting!

AI Seth Godin

As I wrote last time, I have switched from leading the Creator Economy projects on WordPress.com to trailblazing AI features inside the Automattic products suite. My first project was creating the infrastructure to turn your existing writing into advanced Q&A: answering any question as eagerly as your biggest fan that memorized everything you said.

Do you want to ask Seth Godin a question? You are in luck - since he was our early partner for this feature. And Seth's fans asked quite a few!

I was too busy building artificial bloggers to write myself. The work was a huge privilege and great fun. I will publish a summary, but let me know if you want me to focus on something particular. Or you can ask Seth.

I am now on an extended leave.

I've been sprinting to complete all work projects before taking three months off. Every five years, Automattic grants a 3-month sabbatical to the employees. I have enjoyed parental leave in the past, and my plan for this break is quite similar - RVing around alps, and it’s going splendidly so far.

I don't have many plans. I’m also a little tired from all the thinking, so I hope to play more with my daughter, swim, ride my bike, and maybe catch up on reading. I had the same plans for the parental leave, but I have vain hopes to hurry a little less this time around.

I make no promises concerning this newsletter. Maybe it will be a whirlwind of creativity or sparse photos of lakes and mountains. Time will tell.

Yes, I should hand off blogging ‘in my style‘ to the AI system - I’m sure it would be more reliable. In the meantime, I have to rely on my wife to put these things in words much better than I possibly could.

The interconnecting nature of a great intellect

I am reading the biography of John von Neumann, a man instrumental in creating the atom bomb, modern computers, game theory, reconciling different concepts of infinity, and somewhat aligning wave and particle theories of quantum physics.

He is widely regarded as possibly the most intelligent man of the 20th century. Yet when we talk about genius, we usually picture Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, or Leonardo da Vinci - people having the main thing - relativity theory, the lightbulb, most famous painting.

Von Neumann's genius was to identify connections between disparate concepts immediately, simplify the abstractions and clarify work for others.

‘Von Neumann cleared the cobwebs from our minds as nobody else could have done,’ wrote Bigelow long afterwards. ‘A tidal wave of computational power was about to break and inundate everything in science and much elsewhere, and things would never be the same.’

The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann

The best example is what we know as "von Neumann architecture" - a setup he proposed for connecting the different parts of the computer system in a way we still use. This architecture was outlined in his report from work on EDVAC - a successor to ENIAC.

Not only was he able to clarify, synthesize and combine conflicting ideas of an opinionated group of engineers (including himself), but his approach to widely sharing these stellar progress reports ensured the spirit of open collaboration in a manner similar to Open Source today.

And yet, he is not a household name.

The biggest value is in the seams of things - connecting, discovering shared principles, and making things work together, all illegible work.

And yet, we usually celebrate legible work - the best of X, master of this class, leader of Y.