Entries in 2023
Filters: Type: entry × Year: 2023 × Sorted by date
Stuff we figured out about AI in 2023
2023 was the breakthrough year for Large Language Models (LLMs). I think it’s OK to call these AI—they’re the latest and (currently) most interesting development in the academic field of Artificial Intelligence that dates back to the 1950s.
[... 2960 words]Last weeknotes of 2023
I’ve slowed down for that last week of the year. Here’s a wrap-up for everything else from the month of December.
[... 481 words]Recommendations to help mitigate prompt injection: limit the blast radius
I’m in the latest episode of RedMonk’s Conversation series, talking with Kate Holterhoff about the prompt injection class of security vulnerabilities: what it is, why it’s so dangerous and why the industry response to it so far has been pretty disappointing.
[... 539 words]Many options for running Mistral models in your terminal using LLM
Mistral AI is the most exciting AI research lab at the moment. They’ve now released two extremely powerful smaller Large Language Models under an Apache 2 license, and have a third much larger one that’s available via their API.
[... 2063 words]The AI trust crisis
Dropbox added some new AI features. In the past couple of days these have attracted a firestorm of criticism. Benj Edwards rounds it up in Dropbox spooks users with new AI features that send data to OpenAI when used.
[... 1733 words]Weeknotes: datasette-enrichments, datasette-comments, sqlite-chronicle
I’ve mainly been working on Datasette Enrichments and continuing to explore the possibilities enabled by sqlite-chronicle.
[... 1123 words]Datasette Enrichments: a new plugin framework for augmenting your data
Today I’m releasing datasette-enrichments, a new feature for Datasette which provides a framework for applying “enrichments” that can augment your data.
[... 1202 words]llamafile is the new best way to run a LLM on your own computer
Mozilla’s innovation group and Justine Tunney just released llamafile, and I think it’s now the single best way to get started running Large Language Models (think your own local copy of ChatGPT) on your own computer.
[... 650 words]Prompt injection explained, November 2023 edition
A neat thing about podcast appearances is that, thanks to Whisper transcriptions, I can often repurpose parts of them as written content for my blog.
[... 1357 words]I’m on the Newsroom Robots podcast, with thoughts on the OpenAI board
Newsroom Robots is a weekly podcast exploring the intersection of AI and journalism, hosted by Nikita Roy.
[... 1032 words]Weeknotes: DevDay, GitHub Universe, OpenAI chaos
Three weeks of conferences and Datasette Cloud work, four days of chaos for OpenAI.
[... 766 words]Deciphering clues in a news article to understand how it was reported
Written journalism is full of conventions that hint at the underlying reporting process, many of which are not entirely obvious. Learning how to read and interpret these can help you get a lot more out of the news.
[... 1456 words]Exploring GPTs: ChatGPT in a trench coat?
The biggest announcement from last week’s OpenAI DevDay (and there were a LOT of announcements) was GPTs. Users of ChatGPT Plus can now create their own, custom GPT chat bots that other Plus subscribers can then talk to.
[... 5699 words]Financial sustainability for open source projects at GitHub Universe
I presented a ten minute segment at GitHub Universe on Wednesday, ambitiously titled Financial sustainability for open source projects.
[... 2485 words]ospeak: a CLI tool for speaking text in the terminal via OpenAI
I attended OpenAI DevDay today, the first OpenAI developer conference. It was a lot. They released a bewildering array of new API tools, which I’m just beginning to wade my way through fully understanding.
[... 1109 words]DALL-E 3, GPT4All, PMTiles, sqlite-migrate, datasette-edit-schema
I wrote a lot this week. I also did some fun research into new options for self-hosting vector maps and pushed out several new releases of plugins.
[... 1362 words]Now add a walrus: Prompt engineering in DALL‑E 3
Last year I wrote about my initial experiments with DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s image generation model. I’ve been having an absurd amount of fun playing with its sequel, DALL-E 3 recently. Here are some notes, including a peek under the hood and some notes on the leaked system prompt.
[... 3505 words]Execute Jina embeddings with a CLI using llm-embed-jina
Berlin-based Jina AI just released a new family of embedding models, boasting that they are the “world’s first open-source 8K text embedding model” and that they rival OpenAI’s text-embedding-ada-002 in quality.
Embeddings: What they are and why they matter
Embeddings are a really neat trick that often come wrapped in a pile of intimidating jargon.
[... 5835 words]Weeknotes: PyBay, AI Engineer Summit, Datasette metadata and JavaScript plugins
I’ve had a bit of a slow two weeks in terms of building things and writing code, thanks mainly to a couple of conference appearances. I did review and land a couple of major contributions to Datasette though.
[... 564 words]Open questions for AI engineering
Last week I gave the closing keynote at the AI Engineer Summit in San Francisco. I was asked by the organizers to both summarize the conference, summarize the last year of activity in the space and give the audience something to think about by posing some open questions for them to take home.
[... 6928 words]Multi-modal prompt injection image attacks against GPT-4V
GPT4-V is the new mode of GPT-4 that allows you to upload images as part of your conversations. It’s absolutely brilliant. It also provides a whole new set of vectors for prompt injection attacks.
[... 889 words]Weeknotes: the Datasette Cloud API, a podcast appearance and more
Datasette Cloud now has a documented API, plus a podcast appearance, some LLM plugins work and some geospatial excitement.
[... 1243 words]Things I’ve learned about building CLI tools in Python
I build a lot of command-line tools in Python. It’s become my favorite way of quickly turning a piece of code into something I can use myself and package up for other people to use too.
[... 1235 words]Talking Large Language Models with Rooftop Ruby
I’m on the latest episode of the Rooftop Ruby podcast with Collin Donnell and Joel Drapper, talking all things LLM.
[... 15489 words]Weeknotes: Embeddings, more embeddings and Datasette Cloud
Since my last weeknotes, a flurry of activity. LLM has embeddings support now, and Datasette Cloud has driven some major improvements to the wider Datasette ecosystem.
[... 2427 words]Build an image search engine with llm-clip, chat with models with llm chat
LLM is my combination CLI tool and Python library for working with Large Language Models. I just released LLM 0.10 with two significant new features: embedding support for binary files and the llm chat command.
LLM now provides tools for working with embeddings
LLM is my Python library and command-line tool for working with language models. I just released LLM 0.9 with a new set of features that extend LLM to provide tools for working with embeddings.
[... 3466 words]Datasette 1.0a4 and 1.0a5, plus weeknotes
Two new alpha releases of Datasette, plus a keynote at WordCamp, a new LLM release, two new LLM plugins and a flurry of TILs.
[... 2709 words]Making Large Language Models work for you
I gave an invited keynote at WordCamp 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland on Friday.
[... 14188 words]