Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:
📊 Data Engineering
⌨️ ChatGPT Cheats
💩 DOGE
➕ Siri
☠️ Work
🤷 AI UX
🐶 Dogs
Podcast
Lessons in Data Engineering: Scaling, AI, and Open Source with Sandy Ryza
In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle chats with Sandy Ryza, lead engineer on the Dagster project, author, and thought leader in data engineering. Sandy shares his journey through the world of data—from building big data tools at Cloudera to working as a data scientist, product manager, and engineer—and how those experiences led him to help create Dagster, an open-source data orchestration platform.
News and Useful Reads
I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats
Learning to think and write is one of the most powerful abilities. While ChatGPT isn’t going away, how do we balance LLMs and critical thinking, especially in school?
One consequence of this boom in AI use is that, in my online classes, I can no longer be sure of what my students are learning. I have no way of determining which concepts they are grasping and which are proving elusive. And as a result, I no longer have any idea how to modify my teaching to help them.
DOGE Is the Deep State
What happens when you become the very thing you swore you’d fix? Lots of denial, for starters.
A shadowy group of unelected figures reshaping the federal government to their own benefit from the inside? Sounds familiar!
Apple delays upgraded Siri: it’s taking ‘longer than we thought’
In true Apple fashion, they are ensuring the product is fully baked before releasing. I respect that.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple executives, including software boss Craig Federighi, “voiced strong concerns internally that the features didn’t work properly — or as advertised — in their personal testing.” Gurman also says that people in Apple’s AI division “believe that work on the features could be scrapped altogether” and that the features may have to be rebuilt “from scratch.”
Okay, I’m Starting to Think AI Can Do My Job After All
It’s still early, but just how much AI will impact many of our jobs is an open question. The optimist in me believes AI will augment our capabilities, but the pessimist in me worries that companies will continue to take the opportunity to cut employees.
As a fellow reporter, I’d long assumed that our work — obtaining new information and disseminating it — would insulate us from AI automation. It’s a job that requires building relationships, eliciting information from sources, and communicating it effectively. That was supposed to be as human as it gets. But Ratliff’s bot showed otherwise.
Emerging UX patterns in Generative AI experiences
While generative AI has made interacting with technology easier for users, trust remains a significant barrier to widespread adoption. This has been true in the past and remains true today. Addressing trust is key to building and encouraging the adoption of new AI tools.
Other Interesting Finds
How Your Dog Knows When You’re Sick
If you think your dog knows when you’re feeling sick or bad, you are likely correct. And it’s not just your dog.
According to researchers who study canine cognition, it’s usually not just pet owners’ imagination. Pups really do know when their humans are having a rough time, and they use a rich variety of signals to figure it out. Not only can your pet tell when you have the sniffles, but domestic dogs have shown an aptitude for detecting both much more minute mood fluctuations and far more serious physical conditions.