On the #OceanGate sub.

Early in my career I worked for a commercial company that had engineering contracts with the Navy. The level of engineering specifications, design docs, test planning, and testing and retesting was enormous for the projects that I worked on.

Peoples lives were at stake. An the effort was warranted.

When I moved away from government projects into the commercial/consumer world I was shocked at how little, if any, of that effort went into commercial product development.

All of those efforts are used to identify and test boundary conditions, mistaken assumptions, surprising human interactions, and many more things that designers and developers miss initially.

We're starting to hear comments from insiders about design and testing flaws of the OceanGate sub.

Commercial efforts in complex areas like AI, driverless cars, air craft and submersibles are good. But they must be held to the same standard as government efforts, e.g. NASA. Cost control is not an option.

#Engineering #safety

This is HUGE. It's also a stunning example of what meaningful AI regulation looks like -- workers taking their conditions into their own hands, making demands of tech & the companies that control it.

Sincerely grateful to
@billyperrigo
for his sharp, relentless reporting ♥️🙏

https://time.com/6275995/chatgpt-facebook-african-workers-union/

Excited to share our latest game Moderator Mayhem: https://moderatormayhem.engine.is

See if you can win this content moderation challenge and survive long enough to be promoted...

Designed by @mmasnick, Leigh Beadon, and myself in collaboration with
Engine.is

Let us know how you do!

I'm just going to admit this even though it makes me sound like an insensitive asshole, because look, we all make mistakes and the point is to grow, right?

when I first came to Mastodon and people were reminding me to add alt text to my images, I was a little irked

then I read several posts about how much this means to people who rely on reading apps to understand the web

now I'm fully converted. I enjoy writing alt text.

and I think it's crazy this isn't standard across all social mediums.