I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now why I do this to myself

https://jenniferplusplus.com/what-is-a-token/

Actually, I wrote most of it months ago, for work. But, it was well received, so I put it on my blog. This is the more generic version.

The short version is that AI is not magic. It's a real phenomenon with real behavior and tradeoffs. I'm deeply tired of *****ALL***** the tradeoffs being handwaved away. And so much imagination fills in for the actual behavior. So I tried to describe how it's built, because that informs how it works, which informs what it actually does. And to be clear, it does things. It's not useless. But that's not the same as being useful, or worthwhile.

Anyway, I already put ~4k words on this in the article, so I'll shut up and let it speak for itself.

Before: "Don't spend too long documenting things so people can know what's going on, write code."
After: "Don't spend too long writing code, document things so the agents know what's going on."

Before: "Don't spend too long trying to set up the culture and processes of the team so the develop/test/ship loop is smooth, write code."
After: "Don't spend too long writing code, make sure the agents are in a smooth develop/test/ship loop."

We weren't allowed to do it for humans, we _must_ do it for the robots.