Getting the AI Hype Cycle Right

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I got a lot of feedback on my AI Bubble? : AI Skeptics Hard Look at the Value Equation, and the reactions were fascinating. A lot of you read my analysis of the economics and put me in the “AI Skeptic” box.

That’s a mistake. It misses the physics of what is actually happening.

While I agree with many of the skeptical points regarding the current financial bubble—because let’s be honest, the math on some of these valuations is ‘no bueno’—my long-term view aligns much more closely with Jim Keller.

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AI Bubble? : AI Skeptics Hard Look at the Value Equation

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There is an ongoing conversation happening right now between three camps: the AI Accelerationists, who want ‘all gas no brakes”; the AI Safetyists, who want to slam on the brakes; and the AI Skeptics.

The first two camps get all the press because they deal in extremes—utopia or apocalypse and extremes drive the attention economy. But we need to pay attention to the Skeptics. There is a taxonomy to the camp of skeptics; some don’t think AI is going to do what people say it will; others believe that it is a distraction from more pressing issues; and some are all about the economics and the math. The skeptics in this discussion aren’t arguing about the soul of the machine or killer bot swarms; they are arguing about the math. And from their perspective, the math is no bueno. MUY no bueno.

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Resource Allocation: Race or Rate?

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I was recently in a review with a team that was asking for additional resources. I strongly agreed that this team needed more resources but when I listened the case they made, I was not convinced. I thought I would share with you the coaching that I gave them.

Successful communications is all about what is heard, not what is said.  In order for the message you want to send to be heard correctly, you need to speak into someone’s listening. That is to say, the conceptual model that people have in their head is what defines what they are able to hear. You need to understand someone’s conceptual model and craft your communication accordingly. If you make case for additional resources that does not fit an executives conceptual model, they won’t hear your argument and you won’t succeed.

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Working with Microsoft

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A lot of people want to talk with Microsoft with the hopes of establishing a business relationship. Most of these engagements go nowhere because people don’t know how to have that conversation. I thought I would provide some insight into why these discussions fail and what you need to do to maximize your chances of success. While the advice I provide is critical for any dealings with Microsoft (at least my part of Microsoft), I think it is a best practice and applicable to any business engagement.

The most important thing to understand when dealing with people from Microsoft is this:

We all have ten jobs and our only true job is to figure out which nine we can fail at and not get fired.

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Identifying Problems

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Problems, like the poor, are with us always.  The trick is what to do about them.  I recently told my boss about a previous job where someone had resigned and during the exit interview, they cited a particular problem as the reason for leaving. Had I known about the problem, I would have happily addressed it but I didn’t know about it until the person was leaving the company.  The lesson is:

People can only solve the problems they know about.

So when you have a problem, whether it is a work, personal, career, product or service situation, you need to speak up and let people know about it.  Don’t suffer in silence.  In my experience, it is important to use the phrase “this is a problem”.  That signals the need for action (e.g. addressing the problem).

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Write-Host Considered Harmful

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[2023 Update]  

I’ve been meaning to update this for a while.  The advice in this post is no longer current.  A while ago we changed the implementation of Write-Host to being a wrapper on top of Write-Information.  Prior to this, when you used Write-Host, there was no way to capture and process the data you wrote – because it just wrote to the host.  Now that it uses Write-Information, it goes through a path that writes to the host AND allows you to capture and process that information.
-Jeffrey Snover

[End 2023 Update]

When you are writing or reviewing PowerShell scripts, I’d like you to remember the following rule of thumb:

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Evolution of a Script: Timing Operations

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I just love PowerShell!  One of the things I love the most about it is that you can pick the level of programming you want, write a script and then evolve it to meet whatever need you have.  Sometimes you want something quick and dirty and other times you want something you’ll share with others and then other times you want something that is going to be used in production. Continue reading →