Hi there! I’m a 30-year veteran of the Silicon Valley product mines. These days, I’m grappling with the reality of AI in our society, while at the same time working daily with AI (alongside many other awesome humans!) to create AI-powered technology for consumers.
I’ve had the “pollyannaish.com” domain on and off for probably 20 years, and have started and abandoned many attempts at this blog. This time might be the same, or it might not – the difference is that I actually have a ton of post ideas in my head – things that I a) want to say, b) think are worth saying, and c) think are timely and interesting enough that at least a few people might be willing to read them.
And best of all, the topic actually, finally fits the domain name “Pollyannaish”, because I truly am optimistic – and quite possibly too much so – about AI. I’ve been a strong believer all my life in the power of technology to do good – to make people’s lives easier, better, happier, and more fulfilling. And AI is (as others have put it) fundamentally, a normal technology. I see a lot of potential for good in AI.
But that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the potential for (and reality of!) evil in AI. I am a techno-optimist, but not that kind of Techno-Optimist. (I’m much more aligned with this take.) I think there’s a ton of value in generative AI, but I also know there’s a ton of problems, from the potential for labor replacement, to the questionable use of copyrighted works, to the impacts of data centers on everything from climate to your electricity bill, to the impact on human psychology of having daily interactions with things that seem like, but aren’t really, intelligent, conscious entities.
Just to lay it out there: I am a heavy user of AI in my day-to-day life, and my work is in building products that are driven by AI. So I am far from unbiased. However, I also have a strong moral core and a desire to grapple with nuance and hard questions that I think a lot of people tend to oversimplify, so while you may not agree with me, I hope you’ll appreciate that I’m honestly trying to think about these issues in a fair way, and also that I’m very open to other opinions.
These are weird and scary times, but I Have Thoughts ™, and I’m going to share them here.