Things I Read This Week
Cassia Scheffer
Published on February 15, 2025
On Engineering
Chip Huyen on Pitfalls When Building Gen AI
This is a great post if you’re asking “should I use AI for that?”
Use generative AI when you don’t need generative AI
This pitfall is so common when technologies are new. I love Chip’s example because using AI to save on electrical bills is like using a diesel generator to charge your EV.
Common pitfalls when building generative AI applications
Vibe Coding
I hate it.
This has also made me think that vibe coding existed before LLMs were widely accessible. We just called it “legacy” code.
There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It’s possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper…
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) February 2, 2025
On Security and Critical Thinking
Pairwise Authentication of Humans
Ever worry an AI replicant is calling you? Yeah, me too. You and your friends can generate OTP codes to verify if you’re real.
Pairwise Authentication of Humans - Schneier on Security
When the axe came into the forest, the trees said: the handle is one of us.
When the LLM came into engineering the developers said: hey, it’s made of code!
On Technology & Society
First distributed gate teleportation
I know next to nothing about quantum computing. But this was interesting. distributed gate teleportation means we could soon do large-scale quantum computing.
Oxford team teleports first quantum gate in landmark paper
We’re Already at Risk of Ceding Our Humanity to AI
The idea that machines could or should take over making art or writing diminishes the work of teachers, of human-authored books about how to make art and to write, and the fact that people can learn stuff.