Summary: This short post does not talk about autonomous vehicles. It talks about a new paper describing new ways in which complex socio-technical systems could go bad. I then talk about the verification implications of that. Bruce Schneier is a well-known security researcher: I have been following his blog for years. I don’t mention him … More About “The coming AI hackers” paper
Summary: This post talks about GPT-3, a new Machine Learning (ML) system currently making waves in the ML community. It explains why GPT-3 is a big deal, and then considers the verification implications of such systems. One way to look at GPT-3 (and the even-bigger GPT-4, GPT-5 etc. which are sure to follow) is as … More GPT-3 and verification
Summary: This post discusses one of the verification implications of the next 20 years of automation on verification: The problem of trying to predict how people will react to change. A previous post (and another one) discussed the next 20 years of automation and their general implications. This follow-up post discusses one of the … More Future of verification: Better ways to predict behavior
Summary: This post discusses some recent articles about automation and unemployment, and my reactions to them. Following my post about automation and unemployment, I got several comments saying I was too optimistic, and (fewer) saying all this would never happen. I am still trying to “get the future right” (I know this is really impossible). … More Misc stuff: Automation and unemployment
Summary: This post takes a (speculative) look at the general implications of automation over the next 20 years: Employment declines. Democracy does not fold. Universal Basic Income becomes common. Education improves. New-age stuff grows. Quality-of-life inequality grows or shrinks, depending on how you look. And so on. A follow-up post will discuss the verification implications. Note: Title changed … More Automation and unemployment are coming, but I guess we’ll manage
Summary: This post discusses the (possible) rise of mostly-autonomous systems, i.e. systems which are normally autonomous, but still have “operators standing by” for the infrequent-but-crucial moments when they are needed. I’ll discuss this trend, its implications and startup opportunities, and then turn to my favorite topic – the verification implications of all that. Jobs of … More The rise of mostly-autonomous systems