the padded cell

#genie

15 August, 2025

DIKW pyramid when working with genies

…classification of different types of understanding

Curtis shared the DIKW pyramid, that I hadn’t heard of, and said that he feels that the genies helps him process the first two layers much more quickly than he can alone, that it can somewhat help penetrate into knowledge but not much. Which allows him to spend less time in D/I (collection) and then more to then K/W (processing?)

The pyramid of knowledge with a base of data, the next layer built of information, then knowledge and finally wisdom at the peak.

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crumb • • 4 min read • #thinking-out-loud, #genie, #learning

12 August, 2025

Anthropic on prompting for agents

…and musing on genies possibly teaching empathy

Anthropic has released some recordings from their Code w/ Claude event in May and the Prompting for Agents presentation’s “key principles” are basically to empathise with your agent, imagine it’s a brilliant new grad, book smart but missing all things practical at their first job: You need clear concepts, unambiguous instructions, and well-named and designed tools.

I’m more than a little amused that we’re basically coming to a point where, if things pan out with the genies, then the best wranglers will be the ones that can empathise the most with others. Then again, I always thought the brilliant asshole was the exception, they only survive if they’re in charge or are legacy to the company. And sitting in on the review meetings at work… it’s definitely the ones that help the team that we like the most, even if we sometimes need to push them to have their name on something so people don’t overlook them.

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crumb • • 3 min read • #genie, #mentoring, #context-engineering, #kent-beck

10 August, 2025

Simon Sinek on AI and the value of struggle, via Arjit:

People keep telling us life is not about the destination. Life is about the journey. But when we think about AI, we only think about the destination. And it’s remarkable ability to write the book, paint the painting, solve the problem, but we forget the importance of doing the work yourself.

And I think in our modern day and age, we have underrepresented the value of struggle. I am smarter, better at problem solving, more resourceful, not because a book exists with my ideas in it, but because I wrote it. That excruciating journey is what made me grow.

But it’s the same for love, friendships, conflict. And I think that we forget that we give up certain skills or abilities because of technology.

The struggle is the point. More people can generate a mediocre painting or write perfect English now, but they won’t understand the beauty behind either without doing the work. And it’s our prerogative to decide which struggles matter to us or if we just wanted something nice to hang in the toilet.

link • • #ai, #genie, #learning

Went looking for that old ‘kids today don’t memorize’ quote and found an old argument against writing:

[…] They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. […]

One thing we’re not doing as effectively today as we’ve done in the past is to learn lessons by heart. If you don’t know things with perfect recall, how can you expect to apply them?

Socrates goes on to compare a written text to a painting:

You know, Phaedrus, that is the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly correspond to painting. The painter’s products stand before us as though they were alive. But if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words. They seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say from a desire to be instructed they go on telling just the same thing forever.

That last bit especially, “if you ask them anything… they go on telling just the same thing forever.” This all sounds exactly like how we’re talking about genies today, and… we’re probably going to be fine.

link • • #genie, #learning

When everyone gets a genie

learning to handle expertise you didn't earn

We’ve always had to figure out who to trust for expertise, but until now, that access wasn’t universal. Used to be the bloke at the pub who ‘knew things,’ or that friend of a friend who could fix computers (me as a kid), or books if you had the patience. Rich people had their ‘real’ experts on call, though Bernie Madoff shows how well that could work out.

The internet changed things, sure. Suddenly you could reach out to actual experts, find communities, and learn from people across the world. But you still needed judgment, because you could also find a community that agreed the earth was flat, so, you know, mixed bag.

What hasn’t changed is we’ve always had to figure out who to trust. What’s changing is how we get our answers, and who gets to sound like an expert.

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blog • • 10 min read • #thinking-out-loud, #ai, #genie, #learning

24 July, 2025

Your name is still on it

learning to ride the AI motorcycle without crashing

A colleague recently said something that’s been rattling around in my head: “AI gives you speed, but it doesn’t give you direction.” And the more I use these tools, the more I think that undersells the danger.

I have been wondering how to think about AIs (or genies) and how computers are like bicycles for the mind, as Steve Jobs put it, and I think these tools take it further. They are more like motorcycles for the mind. They go really fast, and you better not treat them like a bike, because you need to know what you’re doing. How to handle that thing. You need to make sure you don’t try to go too fast too soon, or for too long, because you’ll get speed blind and… things will happen.

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blog • • 6 min read • #thinking-out-loud, #ai, #genie, #which-role, #kent-beck