Weeknotes 13: Spring shadows
A slightly shorter week with Monday and Friday as annual leave. Lots of sunshine and blue skies but, walking across the Meadows to work, frost remained in the long-shadows of the trees. I'm sure there's a useful metephor in there somewhere...
What happened this week?
A full leadership team meeting on Tuesday tackled updates to a number of Library policies and explored our commercial retail opportunities. There's lots of potential, both online and in-person, but our core offer needs to be better defined, and any service needs to turn a profit as a minimum requirement.
An afternoon of Equality Act training was really insightful, stepping through the legal risks and responsibilities around protected characteristics. I was then asked to lead an HR investigation which will be time intensive and emotionally exhausting. It's all part of Director duties, but not something I'm particularly looking forward to.
Daniel van Strein, our AI fellow, finished up his placement this week with a final presentation to staff. He's been amazing to work with - a unique resource straddling both the ever-changing AI landscape and the idiosyncrasies of Planet Library. Several "test and learn" projects are in action using small language models hosted on a powerful networked PC. The challenge, as ever, is to find the resource to continue the work and scale things up.
I spent some time thinking about appraisals and forward job plans. With continued pressure on people and budgets it can be hard to plot the year ahead without feeling like you're always saying "No", or "Yes, but.. not yet".
I've been accepted onto the Braid Stakeholder Forum which will gather people from civil society and community groups to help shape the direction of Responsible AI in the UK. On a related note, it's been super interesting feeding into the Creative Content Exchange programme. Lots of questions remain and the pilot will likeley surface complexity rather than solve it.
In more disappointing news, I had a paper turned down for a conference in Trondheim, Norway which may have scuppered some Summer travel plans.
Interesting things
- A disturbing deepdive into AI usage in the Iran war and the drive to drastically shorten the “kill chain”, the steps between detecting something and destroying it. The "charisma" of AI often swings attention away from the people and the decision-making that led to major failures.
Kevin T Baker
- In a more digestible take, it looks like AI helped with operations, but not with strategy, which feels like a lesson for other AI use cases.
- John Fitgerald provides some reflections on SCVO's 10 years of growing digital capacity. It's reassuring to read that sustained effort, persistence and evolution are more effective than attempts at radical/quick "transformation".
Watching, listening, reading, doing
📖 It's slow going on the reading front at the moment.
📺 Before all the Artemis II coverage, I got sucked into For All Mankind, a series plotting out an accelerated space race after Russia lands on the moon first. I'm enjoying the alternative histories, but finding myself wanting more on the technical elements - especially as lunar mining is becoming a thing. Also, there are now ten toilets in space.
🎧I enjoyed this cover of Witchita Linemen by Flea and Nick Cave. I also got sucked into watching amazing Letterman performances on YouTube including Future Islands, The Heavy, REM and Jonelle Monái.
🏃 Vogrie Park Run was fun last Saturday, with a windy path through the trees. I need to head out more with the Hackney Half not very far away...
