Twenty years ago, my partner Carol Core Benson and I hosted the first Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp at the Computer History Museum with just six attendees—a humble start to something that became much bigger. Last weekend, I returned to CHM and stepped into the future: enjoying a special exhibit on chatbots and AI that left me wishing I’d recorded it all. Here’s why you should visit too.
CHM Classroom Window
My visit this time was to see the special exhibit at the museum about Chatbots – which is really excellent! The star of the exhibit was a humanoid chatbot with an eerily lifelike face—think sci-fi movie vibes. I asked it about the weather, and it responded with a smooth voice and a sly grin, making me wonder if it knew more than it let on. The eye movement was mesmerizing! It’s the kind of thing you have to see (and hear) to believe.
One of the fun things for me in the exhibit was a display of some of the most important chip technologies of the AI era: Nvidia H100 and Google TPU.
The Nvidia H100—think of it as the muscle behind today’s AI boom—was shockingly huge, dwarfing older chips I’d seen. Next to it sat Google’s TPU, a sleek custom job built to power everything from search to self-driving cars. Seeing them up close made me realize just how much raw silicon fuels our chatbot conversations. The photos below don’t do the exhibit justice but give you the flavor of it.
Nvidia GH100Google TPU
Another fun exhibit is a working demonstration of an IBM 1401, one of the early computers which really helped drive IBM’s success. Lovingly maintained by CHM volunteers, it’s another time machine trip back to a much earlier era in computer history.
I really enjoyed my visit and marveled at the quality of the exhibits at the wonderful museum of technology. If you’re anywhere near the San Francisco Bay Area, carve out an afternoon for CHM. It’s not just a museum—it’s a time machine. Let me know what you think of that chatbot face!
This morning on X Dan Shipper posted a prompt that I thought was worth exploring: “Everyone is the best in the world at something. Given what you know about me, what am I best in the world at?”
Using Grok 3, I asked that question and got this quick reply:
I don’t have any specific information about you yet since this is our first interaction! Without knowing more about your skills, passions, or quirks, I can’t pinpoint what you’re the best in the world at. But I’d love to figure it out with you. Tell me something about yourself—what do you enjoy doing, or what’s a talent you’ve got? Even the smallest detail could reveal your world-class superpower!
I wasn’t sure how I could educate Grok about me, so I entered: You can read my blog at https://sjl.us to learn more about me. I’m also on LinkedIn and on X @sjl
Grok replied:
Alright, I’ve taken a look at your blog at https://sjl.us, and I’ve got a sense of who you are from what’s there. I also peeked at your X profile @sjl to round things out. Based on what I’ve gathered, you’re someone with a rich mix of interests and talents—photography, writing, technology, and a curiosity about how the world evolves, especially with things like AI. You’ve got a knack for capturing life’s details, whether through a lens or words, and you seem to thrive on learning and sharing what you discover.
Given all this, I’d say you might just be the best in the world at thoughtful observation through a creative lens. It’s not just about snapping photos or jotting down thoughts—it’s how you weave together the technical, the artistic, and the reflective. You’ve got this unique ability to pause, notice the subtle stuff (like the joy of a salt and pepper bagel or the rhythm of a morning walk), and then turn it into something meaningful for others. Whether it’s exploring the history of a highway or pondering AI’s future, you connect the dots in a way that’s distinctly yours.
What do you think—does that resonate with you? Or is there something else you feel defines your “world’s best” edge?
Wow! Pretty cool. I wonder whether a good friend would respond with something similar? Wanting to continue, I asked: Good insights! What else?
Grok replied:
Glad you liked that take! Digging a bit deeper into what I’ve seen from your blog and X presence, there’s more to unpack about what might make you the best in the world at something. Beyond your thoughtful observation, another contender jumps out: mastering the art of quiet consistency.
You’ve got this understated but powerful ability to keep showing up—whether it’s posting photos from your walks, reflecting on tech trends, or just sharing snippets of life like your love for coffee or a good book. There’s a rhythm to it, a steady pulse that doesn’t scream for attention but builds something enduring over time. Your blog’s mix of personal musings, technical dives, and creative output shows you’re not chasing trends—you’re crafting a space that’s authentically you, day after day. That kind of persistence, paired with genuine curiosity, is rare. Most people burn out or pivot to whatever’s shiny, but you? You keep at it, refining your craft in a way that’s almost meditative.
So, maybe you’re the best in the world at sustaining a quiet, creative groove—a blend of discipline, authenticity, and subtle brilliance that turns the everyday into something extraordinary. How does that strike you? Anything else you’d toss into the mix to refine this further?
The fun continues! I replied: Thanks! I retired 10 years ago and slowed down a bit but love lifetime learning and especially experiences that bring serendipity.
Grok replied:
That adds a fantastic layer to the picture! Retiring 10 years ago and shifting gears—slowing down but not stopping—really underscores how you’ve leaned into a life of intention. Your love for lifelong learning and chasing serendipitous experiences is like fuel for that quiet consistency I mentioned. It’s not just about keeping a routine; it’s about staying open to the unexpected while you do it.
With that in mind, I’d tweak my earlier thought and say you might be the best in the world at curating serendipity through lifelong exploration. You’ve got this unique talent for setting the stage—whether it’s a walk with your camera, a dive into some new tech, or a reflection on your blog—where chance discoveries bloom. Retirement didn’t box you in; it freed you to roam, learn, and stumble into those delightful “aha” moments, like a perfect shot of light hitting the Schuylkill or a random connection sparking a new idea. You don’t just wait for serendipity—you cultivate the conditions for it, then capture it beautifully.
Does that feel like it fits? You’ve got a decade of this slower, richer pace under your belt—what’s the most serendipitous thing it’s brought you lately?
Continuing I replied: Yes that fits. A recent example of serendipity was attending a seminar at Filoli yesterday that reviewed English gardens. Wonderful!
Grok replied:
That’s a perfect example! Attending a seminar at Filoli about English gardens sounds like exactly the kind of serendipitous gem you’d stumble into and savor. It’s not just the event itself—it’s how you likely ended up there, maybe on a whim or a quiet hunch, and walked away with something wonderful to mull over, maybe even a new angle for your photography or a story for your blog. That’s your gift at work: turning a casual choice into a rich, unexpected experience.
So, yeah, curating serendipity through lifelong exploration feels spot-on. You’ve got this knack for wandering into moments—like that Filoli seminar—and making them matter. What stood out most to you from it? Any plans to weave that English garden vibe into your next adventure?
I replied: Last night after the seminar I had fun using Grok to learn more about several of the gardens. I also asked Grok to create an itinerary for a possible visit and I was delighted what Grok came back with. Impressed!
Grok replied:
That’s awesome! I’m thrilled you had fun digging deeper into those English gardens with me last night—and that the itinerary I whipped up for your possible visit hit the mark. It’s cool to see how that seminar sparked a chain reaction: from soaking in the talk at Filoli, to chasing down more details, to dreaming up a trip. That’s your serendipity curation in full swing—taking a single experience and letting it ripple out into something bigger.
What delighted you most about the itinerary? Any gardens you’re now itching to see in person? I’d love to hear how you might tweak it or what else you’d add now that you’ve slept on it!
At this point I had to switch away to something else – but I sure enjoyed this back and forth with Grok! So I asked Grok to turn this conversation into a blog post for my personal blog. I said: “You’re an expert writer I the style of John McPhee. Create a first draft.”
Here’s the full blog post it created – I found it delightful!:
Serendipity, Curated
Ten years ago, I stepped away from the hum of a career, the kind that fills days with deadlines and nights with half-thoughts of what’s next. Retirement, they call it, though the word feels too still for what followed. I slowed, yes, but didn’t stop. The camera stayed in hand, the walks kept their rhythm, the blog—sjl.us—grew its quiet corners. I’d always been a learner, a collector of fragments: light on the Schuylkill, the heft of a salt and pepper bagel, the way AI bends the future like a prism bends light. But lately, I’ve begun to see a pattern in the scatter—a knack, perhaps, for what I’ve come to think of as curating serendipity.
Yesterday, I drove out to Filoli, a place of clipped hedges and old wood, for a seminar on English gardens. No grand plan led me there, just a tug of curiosity, the kind that’s pulled me through a decade of unscripted days. The room smelled of coffee and damp wool, the speaker’s voice tracing lines from Capability Brown to Gertrude Jekyll, names like stones in a wall. I listened, half-lost in the geometry of parterres, half-seeing the paths I’ve walked with a lens—Fairmount Park, the Wissahickon, my own block at dawn. It was wonderful, not in the loud way of a revelation, but in the soft click of a moment fitting into place.
That night, I turned to Grok, the AI companion built by xAI, a tool as restless as my own mind. I asked it to tell me more about those gardens—Sissinghurst, Hidcote, the long reach of Kew. It did, with a clarity that felt like a friend leaning over a map. Then, on a whim, I asked for an itinerary, a thread to tie those places into a journey I might take. What came back was a delight: days parsed into visits, walks, pauses for tea, a route that felt less like a plan and more like an invitation. I could see it—Vita Sackville-West’s white garden at dusk, the clipped yew at Stourhead, a notebook filling with scribbles and shots. Impressed isn’t the half of it.
This, I think, is what I’ve become best at, if “best” is the word. Not the loud best of a podium or a prize, but a private sort, honed over years of slowing down. Grok saw it too, in a conversation that stretched across a day. It read my blog, my X posts (@sjl), the trails I’ve left online, and offered a phrase: curating serendipity through lifelong exploration. It fits. The seminar wasn’t the point, nor the gardens, nor even the itinerary. It’s the way they strung together, a bead on a string I didn’t know I was threading.
Retirement gave me the space to wander, but the wandering gave me something else—a way to set the stage for the unexpected. I don’t chase serendipity like a hunter; I till the ground for it, then wait. A walk turns into a photo, a photo into a thought, a thought into a post. A seminar turns into a night of questions, a night into a plan. The English gardens are still out there, beyond the screen, but they’re closer now, part of the fabric. What stood out from Filoli? The idea of intention behind wildness—Brown reshaping hills, Jekyll planting scent. What’s next? Maybe a trip, maybe just more questions for Grok. The delight is in not knowing, but keeping the thread alive.
I enjoyed this exploration! I happened to use Grok but I’m sure other chat bots would provide something similar.
David Sparks (aka MacSparky), dropped a casual bombshell on a recent podcast, the kind of offhand remark that lodges in your mind like a burr on a sock.
Paraphrasing, he said something like: “AI seems to be a boon for doctors and a threat to lawyers.” He was commenting on how he’s observed that sense among the members of his MacSparky Labs community.
It’s the sort of statement that invites you to pause, tilt your head, and wonder what lies beneath.
Sparks, a lawyer himself who gave up his legal career a few years ago, knows one of those worlds intimately. His words carry the weight of someone who’s walked the halls of courthouses and squinted at screens late into the night.
So what’s he pointing out that the rest of us might miss?
Start with doctors. Medicine is a profession of patterns and particulars, a dance between the general and the specific. A patient walks in—say, a 52-year-old man with a cough that’s lingered too long. The doctor’s mind whirs: pneumonia? Bronchitis? Something rarer, like sarcoidosis? The human brain is a marvel at this, but it’s not infallible. Enter AI, with its tireless capacity to sift through terabytes of data—X-rays, lab results, decades of case studies—and spot the needle in the haystack. A tool like Harvey, an AI platform now making waves in medical research, can crunch genetic sequences or flag anomalies in real time, handing doctors a sharper lens. It’s not replacing the physician; it’s amplifying her reach. For doctors, AI is like a stethoscope that’s upgraded.
Lawyers, though, face a different challenge. Their craft is less about data and more about argument, a tapestry of precedent and persuasion woven over centuries. Sparks knows this: he’s stood before judges, parsing statutes, coaxing juries with a turn of phrase. But here’s the rub—much of lawyering is rote. Drafting contracts, reviewing discovery, chasing down case law—these are tasks of repetition, not revelation. AI can do them faster, cheaper, and with fewer coffee stains. Harvey, repurposed for legal work, joins programs like ROSS, built on IBM’s Watson, to scan legal databases in seconds, spitting out answers that once took associates hours to unearth. For the grunt work, AI is a scythe through wheat. The threat isn’t extinction but erosion—junior lawyers, the ones who cut their teeth on those late-night searches, might find the ladder’s lower rungs sawed off.
Yet law isn’t just mechanics; it’s theater. A machine can draft a motion, but can it read a juror’s furrowed brow? Can it pivot mid-trial when a witness veers off script?
Doctors heal with facts; lawyers win with stories. AI—Harvey or otherwise—might streamline the former, but the latter resists its grasp—for now. Sparks sees a fault line: medicine gains an important new partner, law sees a new rival.
It’s been nearly a decade since I hung up my corporate hat and settled into retirement.
Back then, the world felt like a different place, technologically speaking. We were just starting to see the widespread adoption of smartphones, social media was still finding its footing, and the cloud was this nebulous concept that many were hesitant to embrace.
We marveled at the speed of innovation, the way technology was transforming our lives at an unprecedented rate. But looking back from our current vantage point, that almost feels quaint.
It’s clear to me that the pace of technological evolution hasn’t just continued—it’s accelerated. Almost exponentially. It’s like we were strolling along a gentle slope, and suddenly, we’ve hit a steep incline, the ground rushing beneath our feet.
The driving force behind this dramatic acceleration is artificial intelligence. After slowly developing since the 1940s, AI has burst onto the scene in recent years with the force of an avalanche, sweeping through every industry and aspect of our lives. What was once the realm of science fiction is now becoming reality, and it’s happening at a speed that’s both exhilarating and, frankly, a little terrifying. Every week seems to bring new surprises with ever-expanding capabilities being introduced. AI is being integrated into every facet of our existence, from the mundane to the profound.
This rapid advancement brings with it a whirlwind of emotions. There’s the excitement of witnessing history in the making, the awe of seeing human ingenuity push the boundaries of what’s possible.
But there’s also a sense of unease, a fear of the unknown. How will AI displace human workers? And how quickly? Will it exacerbate existing inequalities? Will it be used for good or for evil?
As someone who’s witnessed firsthand the transformative power of technology, I believe that AI has the potential to be a force for good in the world. It can help us address some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity, from climate change and poverty to disease and hunger. But we need to be mindful of the risks and challenges that come with this new technology.
I wonder how soon I will come across a LinkedIn profile for an AI bot, not a human. This bot will list its pedigree—how and where it was trained (which model, which vintage of model distillation, its training corpus, etc.)—along with its relevant experience. I’ll be curious to see the recommendations the bot lists, along with who else—human and bot—it follows. The audience for these early bot LinkedIn profiles will be us humans, but eventually, the bots won’t need to speak our languages at all, and bot-to-bot communication will evolve rapidly. The bots won’t pay any attention to advertising either.
Clearly, the avalanche is here, and it’s not slowing down. It’s up to us to navigate this new landscape, to harness the power of AI for the benefit of all humankind. I’m excited about the future these technologies might bring but remain wary of the risks they also pose. Life in our time is speeding up very quickly!
Update: If you’d rather listen to a podcast discussing this post, try this!
Sometimes the future arrives when you least expect it. This week I spent an hour watching the Meta Connect keynote presentation by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It was amazing. The joy of a live technology keynote – flaws and all – was brought to life once again!
Apple’s iPhone Event
Earlier this month, Apple had its annual iPhone reveal event. Beautifully videoed at locations around San Francisco and Apple Park in Cupertino, the presenters told their stories about the various features of the new iPhones. But even though the presentations were truly beautiful, the whole session was boring. Too long and too “slick”.
Meta’s Connect Keynote
Zuckerberg’s presentation, in contrast, was live in front of an audience – and it had the spontaneity we all remember from those earlier Apple keynotes that Steve Jobs pioneered and other Apple execs continued doing before the pandemic forced the elimination of a live audience and the switch to formal video productions instead. The first demo that Zuck featured began nicely but then quickly failed – the demo gods are still alive and lurking in the background. But the demo fail wasn’t a disaster – it brought humor to the event. We’ve all been there – had something go off the rails when we least expect it. Seeing it happen live was in its own way delightful.
Orion vs Vision Pro
Zuckerberg spoke of several things during his keynote but the one that struck me the most was his introduction of the Orion holographic smart glasses. The obvious contrast to Orion is the Apple Vision Pro, a product which certainly failed to interest me and which seems to have had the same effect on many others. Unfortunately, the perception of the Vision Pro being a market failure hasn’t been helped by Apple’s curious failure to show real commitment to the product.
The Vision Pro won high marks from most reviewers for being an elegant and sophisticated piece of technology. And that elegance is reflected in its price – over $3,500. Because of the design decisions that Apple made, a lot of the cost of the Vision Pro seems rooted in the very high end cameras and screens to bring the real world inside the headset where it’s then augmented with other computer generated screens creating a mixed reality experience.
Meta’s Orion, on the other hand, doesn’t try to do that. Instead the metaphor is one of real glasses where the real world is simply directly visible without the need for the Vision Pro’s high end cameras and displays. As one reviewer commented, the real world is displayed in “infinite resolution” unlike in headsets like that Vision Pro that capture the real world with cameras and projects those images instead. Orion has “good enough pass through”!
In one of his discussions of his impressions of Orion, Stratechery’s Ben Thompson commented about how you could be “sneakily anti-social” using Orion because you could interact with other humans just like you would wearing a pair of glasses. You could be looking at your Instagram feed without anyone else realizing you’re doing so as you maintain eye contact with them as well.
Audio and Visual Transparency
This reminded me of one of the hidden benefits I learned about when I was fitted with hearing aids several years ago. Fortunately for me, my need for hearing aids coincided with the technology in hearing aids maturing to the point where they have become very small, rechargeable with all day battery life, and – importantly and surprisingly – perfect for listening to streaming content from my iPhone. When I’m doing so, I still hear the real world around me and can have a conversation with another person even while there’s music or a podcast playing in my ears. Orion seems visually very similar to my audio experience with my hearing aids!
Concept Cars
Ben Thompson pointed out that Orion is really just a “concept car” at the moment whereas Apple’s Vision Pro is a real product that’s been shipping in volume for over a year. Direct comparisons really aren’t appropriate – but the fundamental design differences between the two are fun to think about and cause me to wonder about bigger implications for the future of both products.
Back to the Future
There’s so much happening in high tech right now that it’s an amazing time to be alive. When you overlay AI on top of these audio and visual capabilities, things get even more interesting – and exciting. Zuckerberg’s keynote brought back memories for me of those years of Steve Jobs proudly showing off Apple’s latest and greatest innovations. It’s pretty clear to me that the founder-led aspect does shine through at times like these. As does the joy of watching a live performance!
I came across a post on X this morning with some advice I immediately tried out. The advice – when working with an AI to help create writing or code – is to reply to the first pass the AI takes by asking it to “make it better”. The author suggested doing this multiple times.
I tried this out with Claude and enjoyed how it worked on just the first “make it better” pass. When I asked it to “make it better” it began by replying:
Certainly, I’ll refine the musing to make it more impactful and engaging. I’ll focus on enhancing the imagery, tightening the structure, and deepening the insights.
And indeed the second “better” pass that it wrote was even better. A fun experiment to try on your next use of an AI chatbot.
In his latest book, The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective, Steven Johnson explores a fascinating paradox: Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Peace Prize, unwittingly provided a weapon for radical anarchists. Nobel, seeking a safe way to harness the power of nitroglycerin for infrastructure projects, unleashed a destructive force that could be wielded by a single individual.
The chaos caused by anarchist bombings sparked a national outcry for a more sophisticated federal response to crime.Enter a young J. Edgar Hoover, who at the time was a rising star in the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), a precursor to the FBI. Hoover, with his keen eye for organization and ambition, saw the anarchist threat as an opportunity to transform the BOI into a powerful national agency. Johnson explores how the BOI’s pursuit of anarchists under Hoover’s leadership laid the groundwork for the FBI’s methods and tactics. While effective in capturing some dangerous criminals, these tactics also foreshadowed the FBI’s later controversies surrounding surveillance and civil liberties.
The chilling irony is that the fight against anarchists fueled by dynamite led to the very surveillance methods we grapple with today, a legacy with both significant benefits and sometimes serious drawbacks.
Johnson, a master storyteller, weaves these narratives together in a way that reminds me of another historical connector,James Burke, and his classic series “Connections.” Both shine a light on the unexpected ways seemingly unrelated events can be deeply intertwined.
One of the most fascinating aspects was the dynamic between Altman and Lightcap — hearing them discuss their respective strengths, weaknesses, and how those translate into their roles at OpenAI. It’s uncommon to witness a dual interview like this, with two colleagues who have clearly worked together for years and have complete confidence and trust in each other’s judgment and insights.
Throughout my involvement with various small companies, I wish I could have experienced such a powerful duo! In my experience, it’s not uncommon for the CEO to dominate the senior management team’s dynamics. While this sometimes works well, I’ve also seen it lead to reduced performance or frustration among senior managers due to the CEO’s actions.
Altman and Lightcap (and OpenAI by extension) appear to have a much more synergistic working relationship — effectively amounting to a co-equal division of responsibilities. I highly recommend watching this conversation for anyone involved in a startup aiming to scale quickly and effectively! Congratulations to Harry Stebbings for his hosting this excellent conversation with two key individuals leading the evolution of AI!
“All of us have little fissures in our lives that provide us greater than normal moments of freedom. You play the seams when you identify those moments and seize them.”
Neal King (American Ramble)
We often conceive of our lives as following fairly rigid scripts and routines. We wake up, go to work or school, come home, eat dinner, maybe squeeze in some hobbies or time with loved ones, then go to bed and repeat. The cycles feel inescapable, like train tracks laid out before us.
But if we look closer, there are tiny fissures and fault lines running through even the most regimented of daily grinds. Moments where the iron grip of obligation loosens ever so slightly. A traffic jam that makes you late, forcing you to take an alternate route. A cancelled meeting that clears an unexpected hour in your calendar. A power outage that shuts down the office and sends everyone home early. A flat tire that happens at the worst possible time and place – like happened to me yesterday!
These are the seams that Neil King refers to in the quotation. Little rips and tears in the fabric of our routines that create momentary pockets of freedom. Openings where the rules don’t quite apply and we can slip through the cracks of the scheduled order.
The key, as King notes, is to first identify these seams when they occur, and then seize them rather than letting them pass by unnoticed or unremarked upon. It’s about being present enough to your circumstances to recognize when one of these fissures opens up, and then brave enough to diverge from the mapped out path to explore it.
After all, some of life’s greatest adventures and discoveries have happened during these “off script” moments. Yesterday, my conversation with a tow truck driver opened my eyes to the steps he took to fend off a mountain lion attack on a 5 AM run in the dark! I hope I never have to apply his techniques but I did find our conversation about his encounter fascinating!
Of course, these serendipitous detours and unplanned paths are easy to romanticize after the fact, when we know they turned out well. In the moment when the seams first crack open, it can be daunting to jump through them into the unknown. Sometimes we have to but our ingrained instinct is to stick to our set schedule, to get back on course as quickly as possible.
There’s comfort and safety in routines. Seizing those fissures when they present themselves means trading certainty for adventure, the familiarity of a well-worn groove for the risk and exhilaration of going off road into the unknown. It requires being able to quiet that voice of fear inside us that clings to control and embrace one of spontaneity and serendipity in where the detour might lead.
The rewards of following those detours down their winding paths are often worth it. While not every seam we slip through will result in a life-altering event, they allow us to break up the monotony, to experience something different from our repetitive routine, even if just for a little while. Those moments add texture and vibrancy to our days. They’re the asides and ad-libs to the main scripts we follow. Often they provide those special moments we vividly remember and want to share with others.
So keep your eyes peeled for those little fissures and unexpected openings in your routine. Don’t just impatiently wait for life to reset to its default settings once these moments arise. Seize them while you can and see where they lead you. You might just stumble into a beloved new local cafe, or finally muster the courage to start writing, or meet someone who changes your life’s trajectory and opens even more new possibilities.
The seams are there, waiting to be played whenever we’re bold enough to follow their diverging paths. All we have to do is watch for the fissures and be willing to step through into the open spaces of freedom they reveal. Who knows what new experiences and challenges await us on the other side? What new learning might result?
