Blog

Monday, 8.49pm

Sheffield, U.K.

To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You’d better go look for work as a plant or wild animal. – P. J. O’Rourke

Sometimes I feel like all I do is talk around what’s happening to what we do with the introduction of generative AI.

This probably bores some people.

But it’s important to test these new technologies and understand their limitations and applications.

Hypes are nothing new, after all.

In the last twenty years I remember being excited by biological computing, genetic algorithms, cloud computing and a bunch of other fads, before now playing with Gen AI, as the cool kids call it.

And I’m finding that my evolving relationship with it is hitting a few hurdles.

First, there’s an issue with cognitive capacity – how much our brains can take in.

For example, the other day I wanted to modify some code to make it more flexible.

The output from the AI worked perfectly and that was good – because it took something that I knew how to do but which would have taken me ten minutes or so and did it in less than a minute.

Time saved. Great.

Today I was trying to understand a particular statistical approach.

I tried putting the question into the AI and ran the answer but I couldn’t really work out whether it had understood what I had asked and if the answer it was giving was right.

The problem is I didn’t know enough to know if the AI was doing something correctly.

This is probably worth repeating.

In order to have confidence in what the AI tells you, you need to know enough about it already to be able to judge the quality of the information.

What you know matters.

You can’t just put something into the system, take the answer, publish the result and expect it to be correct.

The limitation is your ability to understand what’s going on.

Now, when I don’t understand something I read about it, watch videos, try and find a quick solution.

If still don’t get it it’s time to do what Pirsig writes about in “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” and that’s to crank up the scientific method.

To do this you get a notebook – I often prefer a clipboard and paper – and you start writing things down.

You read, take notes, try and understand what you can do.

Which takes me back to another book I read two decades ago – “The Personal Software Process” by Watts Humphrey.

He writes there about the value of printing out code to do a review before running it – you can pick out many bugs when you see it in that different format.

The point is that we are constrained by our ability to comprehend what’s going on.

We need time to appreciate and consider and digest what is presented to us.

If you’re using AI to help you do something for a client, for example, it doesn’t matter if you can do it in five seconds when you previously took 5 days.

The bottleneck is your customer’s ability to understand what you’re presenting to them.

The real shortcut is something different – ask yourself when a client would simply accept the output of an AI generated system when you present it to them.

One word.

Trust.

Not in the AI. Trust in you.

That’s when the client will take your word that the output is good.

Which then makes you the next bottleneck – do you really understand what’s going on?

Or if you have teams working for you that use AI, do you trust them to do what’s needed to understand the output?

I think that in a world where anything can be generated humans will rely more and more on each other – and trust will become vital – even more so than it is now.

Does this make the case for a blockchain? Is that what AI will take us towards? Is AI the problem to which blockchain is finally a solution?

Or is trust something that will become the most human thing to grow?

You only work with people you like, admire and trust.

We’ll see how things work out.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Sunday, 8.10pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Myths give us our sense of personal identity, answering the question, ‘Who am I?’ – Rollo May

I had a few hours to myself today and spent them browsing through the bookshelves at a few charity shops.

There’s something about books that almost spiritual for me. They call to me in a way.

But what can possibly be there in a book that makes me, or anyone else, choose to pick it up?

I think it has something to do with words and connections.

A few weeks ago we were at the Leake Street Arches looking at the amazing art on long stretches of graffiti wall.

Unsurprisingly, a book on graffiti art jumped out at me.

In it I learned that graffiti began as a way that people wrote their names – it’s born out of playing with letters and words.

Some words spark an instant connection.

Over the last week or so I’ve been thinking about the role of professional social media, in particular LinkedIn.

My feed is full of a few specific types of posts.

There are the analyst researchers – a stream of reports, observations and commentary on things that are happening in the areas in which I am professionally interested.

There are the healthy fruits and vegetables of the social media world.

A Like is a way to bookmark these for when I have time to look at them.

Then there are the influencers, carefully crafted posts designed to hook you in and consume content from the creator.

There’s a snacking, high calorie low value feeling to these.

If I didn’t read them, nothing would really change, I suspect.

And then there are the points of view, the advisors and experts that tell you what you should do and why their one way is the best.

Which, as I have grown more experienced, turns out never to be as simple or straightforward as they might have you believe.

For example, take the idea that you have to be focused on a single thing – you need to develop your identity around one or very few core propositions that make it possible for people to decide whether they’re interested in you or not.

The word identity and this particular concern is what made me decide to pick up Chuck Palahniuk’s book “fugitives and refugees”.

He starts with a conversation in which he is told that “everyone has at least three identities”.

Which one of those are you supposed to choose and present to others?

I guess you can choose the one that you think will appeal to the most people, or the one that will appeal to the few people that will spend money on what you have to sell, or the one that you’re truly proud of and would like to be associated with.

Ah, it’s already getting tricky.

I’m a little worried that the professionalisation and speedup of everything is going to make it harder to find the really valuable lessons in life.

If you have to black out a 6 metre by 3 metre strip of wall and choose one word that truly captures the essence of what you’re thinking about or feeling or struggling with right now, then you’re going to take your time to get it right.

A good place to start is perhaps by finding words for this identity we have or want to have.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Saturday, 10.39pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change. – Stephen Covey

We have less choice in many situations than we think.

We live in systems that make it almost impossible to select choices that are not optimal within the framework of the system.

Take the word “system” itself, for example.

For many people, the word system might bring up an image of a computer system, a stereo system – some kind of arrangement of technology.

Others might think of a larger coordinated construction – like a transport system, the energy system or the judicial system.

A few researchers may argue that a system is something that exists in the mind – it’s a construct rather than something real – you can’t point to a system anywhere in the wild. It’s just a mental shortcut that helps us think.

Decisions you can make are therefore constrained by the framework in which you find yourself.

It’s easier to be a vegetarian in some countries than others.

I believe some of my family survived on just eating apples while travelling in Europe once a few decades ago.

At the time, some of the Europeans they met seemed to think that fish was ok to eat on a vegetarian diet.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that it’s hard to go against the prevailing dominant ideology of the place and time in which you find yourself.

It’s easier to go along with what seems to be winning and what looks like it will go on forever.

In 2007 it looked like housing markets were a sure fire bet.

In 2008 they crashed.

By 2022 it looked like interest rates would stay low for the rest of time.

They did not.

The question for us now, as we head in to a tumultuous few years, is looking at the events that look inevitable and asking what we would do in two cases.

What if those events come true?

And what if they don’t?

The answers to the second scenario may be the more important ones.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Friday, 9.43pm

Sheffield, U.K.

I get ideas about what’s essential when packing my suitcase. – Diane von Furstenberg

We’re watching a travel series and I am always taken aback by just how much people seem to want to carry around with them.

The problem with things is that they load you down.

A few clothes, a book to read, something to write in, money, and you’re good to go for weeks, if not months.

It’s like we knew secrets growing up in a country without all that much.

One of the things you packed (after immodium) was a small bar of washing soap and a brush.

You could always wash your clothes in the sink and hang them up to dry.

That said, in certain places it’s the extra layers that weigh you down.

The coats, and the boots and the waterproofs and all that stuff.

Along with the tent and the neck support and the fancy aluminum water bottle.

I suppose these days having technology is also essential and that takes up space.

Although really it’s probably possible to have everything you need on a USB drive.

I recently learned about offline browsers like Kiwix.

It’s designed to provide offline access to knowledge in places where the internet isn’t that good.

You can download all of Wikipedia – it’s around 60 gigs.

That’s … the size of the £6 MicroSD card I bought recently.

All that in a package around 1cm square.

Talking of Kiwix, it’s also pointed me to resources like Wikiversity, where you can create collaborative open learning materials.

I’m not really making a point about minimalism or choosing what you love or anything like that.

It’s really more about being aware of how much stuff weighs you down.

And these days that stuff is not just physical stuff – it’s emotional, mental and digital.

I’m not sure what the answer is for most people – our brains aren’t equipped to cope with abundance – we hoard things fearing that scarcity is just around the corner.

Except now it isn’t – its a problem of too much too cheap.

It’s hardly surprising that we’re messing up the world.

On that happy note…

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Thursday, 9.56pm

Sheffield, U.K

Automation is no longer just a problem for those working in manufacturing. Physical labor was replaced by robots; mental labor is going to be replaced by AI and software. – Andrew Yang

I’ve been using Chat GPT almost every day for around six months now, perhaps longer, and I’m not sure I could go back to working without access to something like that now.

So why is that?

I’ve recently had a paper accepted for publication.

While writing it, I had to learn a number of new techniques and understand how to get and interpret statistical results.

What were the options for doing this in the past?

Well, there are books and tutorials and those are great starting points.

And there are experts, people who can help you.

But the expert I reached out to wanted me to take a course rather than helping me get the job done.

Which is fine – for them – but not really what I needed.

I found that instead I could have a conversation with Chat GPT and work towards learning and understanding what was required.

This is similar to the rubber duck technique.

If you want to test your understanding of something get a yellow rubber duck that you use in the bath and start talking to it – explain what you’re trying to do.

Now imagine if that duck talked back to you.

That’s what Chat GPT does.

You can ask it questions. You can try out its suggestions. You can get its take on the results that come out of the programs you run.

It’s like having a collaborator, a smart research assistant or colleague that’s able to give you a point of view.

That doesn’t mean you can abdicate your responsibility to understand the results or take its generated output as correct.

But it’s something that’s a lot more than nothing – you have a starting point.

For example, I’m stuck on some code right now where the Chat GPT answer isn’t working – the response to an error code is the same as the previous response.

But it also helped me quickly rework some working code to make it more flexible.

It’s helping me write copy faster that I can then edit and rework.

It’s not writing this though, in case you were wondering.

The reality is that technology will always change how we do things.

What is less likely to change is why we do something.

As humans, as living creatures, the natural state of being for us is not work, but play.

Taking the labour out of work makes it more like play.

Is that not a good thing?

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wednesday, 9.56pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it. – Thomas Paine

We are going into a difficult few years.

War is raging on two continents. It may spread.

The tightening of power and control, with a nod towards dictatorship, is taking hold around the world, even in countries that have a history of freedom.

Freedom is not a birthright. It is never given. It has always been something to fight for.

Institutions protect freedoms. They are a bulwark against those that would take yours away.

So which freedoms do you value?

You can tell if you look at what you support. And I can tell you what I value by looking at where I give.

The first freedom, the one that I have supported the longest, is the freedom to have clean water.

Wateraid provides clean water and decent toilets for people.

You didn’t think that was an important part of freedom did you?

There’s a programme about the holocaust – I can’t remember the name – where there’s a scene where the Jewish prisoners are talking about how the camp they are living in has only one toilet.

That wasn’t a mistake, they note.

If there’s only one toilet, it’s because the engineers only decided to put a single one in.

The intention was to deliberately reduce the inmates to a lower condition, one where their most basic needs were unmet.

And that’s not right.

The next freedom I support is the freedom to learn, to have knowledge.

The Open Library and Wikipedia get my support here.

Everyone needs access to knowledge, to have the opportunity to learn and develop.

In a world where knowledge makes the difference between a good life and a trapped life, these resources matter.

After that we come to a world which few people know about but almost everyone is affected by.

Our world runs not on resources or capital but on information, which in turn relies on software.

Control the software people use and you have control over them.

And that’s why Free software is important.

Free as in Freedom, not Free as in beer.

I wouldn’t be able to do what I do now, have the career I have, the work I do, or even have you read these words if there wasn’t a quiet movement of determined people building and maintaining an ecosystem of Free Software at the Free Software Foundation.

The tools that they maintain give us the ability to publish, to write and create and reach others.

To communicate and compute and design and act.

These are the tools that protect freedoms.

I was taught civics growing up – lectured about the importance of multiple centres of power – parliament, the judiciary, the military, the civil service – and how these institutions worked to safeguard liberty.

Freedom is maintained by good institutions, not by high hopes and speeches.

And these days those institutions include organisations that protect your freedom to drink clean water, to read, to learn and to write, compute and publish without fear.

We need to support them.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Tuesday, 10.23pm

Sheffield, U.K.

If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction. – Sam Walton

One of the good things that happened last year was getting an academic paper published.

This taught me a great deal about the process of writing, in addition to statistics, peer review and research design.

It was also one of the hardest things I’ve had to do – not because it was difficult but because it required time on task.

When writing a blog post I can write 500 words in 20 minutes.

I might only get out 100 in a 2 hour session working on a paper.

That’s because each sentence in a paper is critically read by a reviewer.

And I do mean every sentence.

That kind of scrutiny is invaluable – it helps you work and rework your ideas until they are as clear as possible.

I can see the difference between my first draft and the later versions of the work – and the hundreds of hours that went into it.

But those hundreds of hours are where the learning is.

I am trying to work out how to communicate this idea on platforms such as LinkedIn where there are a number of people who talk about their products and services and how it will make things easier for us.

For example, just buy a set of templates And you’ll get better at writing.

Or buy a software product and it will take care of all your problems.

The key selling point here is ease of use – this will make it easy to do something.

But if something is easy to do it also has very little value per unit.

In essence it’s a commodity and its value will tend towards the marginal cost of production.

If writing can be done by a machine it will cost pennies – and make pennies for the owner of the machine.

Many pennies, perhaps – but the writing you buy from the owner of the machine can only be resold for nothing.

The point I’m making is that if something is easy to do it’s often not worth doing.

For you and me anyway.

If we want the time we spend on learning a skill to have value we need to focus on skills that are hard to do.

That’s when we have a moat, an advantage, something that confers a competitive edge.

No edge lasts forever, of course, so we need to keep learning.

And this is where the problem of selection comes in.

We have a finite amount of time so we have to invest our hours in skills that are rare and valuable that give us a competitive advantage.

And that means getting focused, niching down, really getting clear on where you add value with what you do best.

The other advantage of finding a niche is that it’s easier to partner with others.

If you try and do everything then you don’t need anyone else and they’re unlikely to be happy working with you.

Partnerships are based on having complementary capabilities.

And with the headwinds we’re facing in the economy right now good partners can be the most valuable people you can find.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. – H.L. Mencken

It’s the time of year when we set goals and resolutions and get ready to go.

The momentum will last days, maybe weeks, and then our energy runs out and we go back to doing whatever it is we were doing before.

That’s because change is hard.

And complicated.

And it doesn’t happen in a straight line.

Let’s take weight loss – that problem of abundance.

We can lose weight by cutting calories and increasing exercise, but the relationship is nonlinear.

Cut too many calories and your body goes into starvation mode, conserving what you have and slowing down weight loss.

Exercise too much and your body becomes more efficient, doing more with less.

There’s a place where we get stuck – a sort of plateau or local optimum.

Getting away from this requires a tremendous amount of energy and an understanding of multiple interrelated and conflicting factors.

For example, in many cases the best type of anything is the type you don’t use.

The cheapest energy is the unit you don’t use.

The best code is the one you don’t write – it can’t have a bug.

The best food has the least added to it – it’s closest to being natural.

Once we get stuck in a loop of using energy, say fuel for commuting, then it’s very hard to get away from burning what you need to get to work.

The pandemic showed us there is a different way.

We can remove the miles embedded in the delivery of products and services.

We can serve clients without burning fuel and going to where they are.

We can create products without transporting them – at least those that can be 3d-printed at home.

We can reuse and share and buy old rather than new.

Perhaps a good resolution for the year ahead is to do less – and see what kind of impact that has on the quality of everything we do.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Friday, 8pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Climate change must be approached as an opportunity to transition our economy to a zero carbon future. Business understands this even when governments don’t. – Barry Gardiner

The 7C Decarb Model lists seven elements that have turned up again and again in my last 20 years of working with organizations on energy and sustainability projects.

This is a simple and easy framework to use and understanding how the elements work together is the key to gaining traction and finding the opportunities in the net zero transition.

Tuesday, 8.53pm

Sheffield, U.K.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. – W. Somerset Maugham

I have too many books to fit on my bookshelves so I have been boxing them up to give away and keeping just the ones I think are important. This has resulted in a shelf just full of books on writing. These include:

1. “On Writing” by Stephen King
2. “Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes”
3. “Stylish Academic Writing” by Helen Sword
4. “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser
5. “Draft No. 4” by John McPhee
6. “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott
7. “A Slip of the Keyboard” by Terry Pratchett

and many more….

I am probably not alone in being curious about the act of writing, this thing that many of us are compelled to do. Many people want to have written, as I read somewhere, but few want to actually write. To sit at their desk, propelling a pencil or tapping at the keyboard to make the words come out and make some kind of sense.

Although I have not been posting on this blog I have been writing. I’ve been working on papers and multiple revisions of a thesis, writing and rewriting and then throwing away and starting again.

I’ve written a first draft in pen, and in pencil. I’ve written on index cards and in notebooks. I’ve written in text files and LibreOffice documents. I’ve tried writing in pieces which are then stitched together and writing in one go.

I don’t think any one way is going to work for the long term and I flip flop between approaches. Perhaps a change is good because it lets you come at the same material in a different way. If you’re stuck at the computer try writing on paper and vice versa.

The most recent advice I’ve gotten has helped me with my writing right now. There are two parts to this.

First, start writing in one document and write from start to finish.

I have been working on different sections of my thesis with a small amount of content in each one. That’s made it difficult to find a flow or be clear on the narrative.

So I’ve started again, right at the beginning and I’m now working forwards a sentence at a time and trying to get ideas to line up in order.

It’s like someone else said – doing this kind of work is a bit like driving in the dark. All you can see is the bit of road ahead illuminated by your headlights but if you keep going you can get the whole journey done that way.

The second this is about managing your research. Use Zotero – it’s great as a way to integrate your references and it works with LibreOffice, markdown and Lyx (for when you’re using Latex). But the actual point is to have your research in one text file – all the notes, jottings, points from papers – all that stuff – keep it in one file. That’s because you can search for keywords and find related content more easily than if it’s locked away in a notebook or in multiple documents.

It’s possible that someone at this point will suggest tools to use like Notion or some other Zettelkasten type thing.

The benefit of keeping things simple – a text file for your notes and the document tool of your choice to write the actual thesis or book or whatever – is that you aren’t distracted by the features and possibilities of the tools. The point is to get the word count up day after day. That’s what matters and what you get marked on. Anything that gets in the way is not helping.

And now I had better get back to writing.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh