Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 26 " So GPT-4 is actually 8 expert raccoons in a trenchcoat. " ― Sasha Luccioni   Triggered by the citation of Luccioni's tweet in the article " GPT-4's Secret Has Been Revealed " by Alberto Romero. So GPT-4 is actually 8 expert raccoons in a trenchcoat 😂 https://t.co/eRWhcZoJ5l — Dr. Sasha Luccioni 💻🌎🦋✨🤗 (@SashaMTL) June 20, 2023 Image created with Microsoft Bing Image Creator (powered by DALL-E):  

Quote of the Week 25 " You can make a short road take forever . " ― Sophocles  (Antigone) " Es braucht viel Zeit, einen kurzen Weg zu gehen . " ―  Sophokles  ( Antigone , 232) " Derlei bedenkend, ging ich müßig langsam.  Und so wird auch ein kurzer Weg zum weiten."   ―  Sophokles  ( Antigone ) "And so, mulling it over, on I trudged, dragging my feet,  you can make a short road take forever."  ―   Sophocles  ( Antigone ) Triggered by the use of the quote in German as banner on a theatre truck:

Quote of the Week 24 " Direction is much more important than speed . " ―  Richard Feynman   Shreyas Doshi did offer a related thought: 3/ It is important to move fast, but the direction of our movement is more important than the speed. Backtracking after ending up in the wrong place sounds easy in theory but is extremely hard in practice because of our ego, our users’ attachment, and our code’s inelasticity. — Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) October 6, 2020 Triggered by the use of the quote in a recent @ProfFeynman tweet : Direction is much more important than speed. — Prof. Feynman (@ProfFeynman) June 7, 2023

Quote of the Week 23 " Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic . " ― Arthur C. Clarke   ( Clarke's 3rd Law ) Adapted by Grey's Law : " Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice ."

Quote of the Week 22 "A computer  is the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds. " ― Steve Jobs Triggered by the use of the quote in a Microsoft keynote by Satya Nadella last week:

Quote of the Week 21 " He who can go to the fountain does not go to the water jar. " ―  Leonardo da Vinci Cited in the biography " Leonardo da Vinci " by Walter Isaacson. Triggered by a recent vacation trip to Florence .

Quote of the Week 20 "'No' is a complete sentence . " ―  Anne Lamott Actually, I do prefer a variation of the statement : "'No' is a valid answer . " Triggered by Bary Kaufman's tweet : "No is a complete sentence." @JFM — Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman ⛵🛵 (@sbkaufman) May 8, 2023

  Quote of the Week 19 "I f you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop. " ― Keith Jarrett (*May 8, 1945) Happy birthday to the master of perfect improvisation.* Triggered by unforeseen and hence unplanned circumstances during a recent vacation trip that reminded me of the story behind " The Köln Concert " bestselling solo-piano album ever  ―  in any genre  ―  covered here : "If I did The Köln Concert again, there'd be so much less ornamentation. It's all been transcribed and exists as sheet music now, but that just shows me all the sections I'd cut out. One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop." Source: " There is no plan " (The Guardian, October 2006) *See The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts for those that don't agree with the juxtapostion of "perfection" and "improvisation".

2nd Quote of the Week 18 " The road to AI is paved with good attentions. " ― Alan Bipe Malaphorism triggered by the title of Gary Marcus' blog  "The Road to AI We Can Trust".

  Quote of the Week 18 " Just because chatbots can't think doesn't mean they can't lie. " ― Maria Bustillos Triggered by the title of the article in The Nation covering the Internet Archive .

  Quote of the Week 17 " A ruler who is not wise can never get good advice. " ―  Niccolò Machiavelli See also:  https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2223

Quote of the Week 16 " Nukes don't make stronger nukes. But AI makes stronger AI. " ― Aza Raskin  (The A.I. Dilemma)  Triggered by the use of the quote in the thought-provoking (and controversial) talk " The A.I. Dilemma " by  Aza Raskin and Tristan Harris : BTW, I was not able to find another reference of the Yuval Harari quote they used in the presentation. [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 15 " Art must hurt. " ― Theodor W. Adorno    Triggered by the use of the German  quote   "Kunst muss weh tun." in a piece on German TV without referencing Adorno. Can AI-generated art ever qualify? See also: "Art must hurt. First, it must hurt the artist himself; the artist must experience pain before he creates. Otherwise, he won't be able to produce tears. A true artist must describe the things he is most afraid of, all that which he wished to avoid." ―  Itamar Yaoz-Kest [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 14 " Large Language Models are going to do to human discourse what fossil fuels did to climate. " ― Alan Cooper  Triggered by Alan 's tweet : Large Language Models are going to do to human discourse what fossil fuels did to climate. — Alan Cooper (@MrAlanCooper) March 31, 2023 See also " I am not afraid of robots. I am afraid of people. " by Gary Marcus: " ... the reality is that large language models remain exactly what I have always described them to be: bulls in a china shop, powerful, reckless, and difficult to control. Making new systems that are “more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal” should literally be at the top of everyone’s agenda." [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 13 " We suffer more in imagination than in reality. " ― Seneca   Triggered by the use of the quote   "There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality." in a  tweet by Billy Oppenheimer  published on Saturday. In Jaws, you don’t see the shark until 1 hour and 21 minutes into the movie. That wasn’t the plan. According to the script, the mechanical shark, “Bruce,” was supposed to get way more screen time. But Bruce was built for and tested in a North Hollywood freshwater tank. Oops:… pic.twitter.com/FchkwhcVYm — Billy Oppenheimer (@bpoppenheimer) March 25, 2023 [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 12 " Business outcomes measure the health of the business. Product outcomes measure a change in customer behavior. " ― Teresa Torres Triggered by a discussion of how to align product development goals with business goals in the context of an OKR initiative. My take which is  influenced by T. Torres and others including M. Cagan and T. Herbig :  In the triangle of "business", "customer", and "product", do not try to directly derive the product objectives from the [internal] business objectives, instead look at the [external] business impact for the customer first. See also " What’s the Difference Between OKRs and Outcomes? " by Teresa Torres: "Product teams don’t typically have direct influence over business metrics like increasing revenue. But they do have the ability to directly influence product outcomes—changes in customer behavior—that can ultimately contribute to business outcomes." As Melissa Suzuno st...

Quote of the Week 11 " The amount of hype around AI doubles every 18 months. " ― Gary Marcus   Triggered by Gary's recent  tweet (a variation of Moore's law ) in reply to Sam Altman (CEO OpenAI):   a new version of moore’s law that has arguably already started: the amount of hype around AI doubles every 18 months https://t.co/aZOlvSKtOP — Gary Marcus (@GaryMarcus) February 27, 2023

Quote of the Week 10 "The limits of my language means the limits of my world." ― Ludwig Wittgenstein   Triggered by the citation in a recent Microsoft Research paper: " Language Is Not All You Need: Aligning Perception with Language Models ". "Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt."  Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung ( Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ),  Satz 5.6 [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 9 "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." ― C. Northcote Parkinson ( Parkinson's Law ) Triggered by the reference in a recent blog post  on Google's decline by Stephen E. Arnold. [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 8 " Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time. " ― Jean-Michel Basquiat Triggered by a recent tweet similar to this one: “Art is how we decorate space; music is how we decorate time,” — Jean-Michel Basquiat pic.twitter.com/O5a91JJNLu — upfromsumdirt (@upfromsumdirt) February 5, 2023 [ LinkedIn ]  

Quote of the Week 7 " The valuable attributes of research men are conscious ignorance and active curiosity . " ―  Willis R. Whitney   Triggered by the use of another Whitney quote in the context of the search for a new coach by TSV 1860 München : "Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do something, when all they need is one reason why they can." [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 6 " Man conquers the world by conquering himself . " ― Zeno of Citium Triggered by a Daily Stoic tweet: "Man conquers the world by conquering himself." — Zeno — Daily Stoic (@dailystoic) January 25, 2023 Source: Wikipedia [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 5 " Objective truths are established by evidence. Personal truths by faith. Political truths by incessant repetition." ―  Neil deGrasse Tyson Cited in the June 2022 " Fantastic Facts and How to Use Them " presentation by Nithin Bopanna. Triggered by the reference to a different part of the presentation  focused on the (ab)use of DORA metrics . [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 4 "W hat makes great products: it is not process; it is content. " ― Steve Jobs Triggered by the content of the video clip in Marty Cagan's " Master Class " presentation @ 19:25 minutes. See also: Cited by many including Max Pucher : "You know what it is? People get confused. Companies get confused. When they start getting bigger they want to replicate their original success. And they start to think that somehow there is some magic in the process of how that success was created. So they start to try to institutionalize the process across the company. And before very long people get very confused and think that the process is the content. That was ultimately the downfall of IBM. IBM has the best process people in the world; they just forgot about the content. And that’s what happened a little bit at Apple, too. We had a lot of people who were great at management process; they just didn’t have a clue as to the content. And in my career I fo...

Quote of the Week 3 " When faced with two choices, flip a coin. When it’s in the air, you’ll know which side you’re hoping for. " ―  Arnold “The Brain” Rothstein Triggered by the use of the quote in Steven Buccini's blog article " 8 Hard Truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job ". Image source: QuotesBerry [ LinkedIn ]