1/ I build AI and digital infrastructure across the wider Caribbean and other Small Island Developing States, starting in Barbados. Search. Local knowledge. Language. Government. Culture. Here's what I'm building, and what I've learned putting it into production. 🧵

OMFG Ya I’m Fucking Hollering 😭😭😭😭😭

This was just amazing to watch, just gliding along with the vultures. piped.video/watch?v=HL8cDBHw…

This morning it finally came home to me. I will probably never write another program in C again. Which is a big deal. I've been writing C since 1983. 43 years is a long time and a lot of skill investment. It's not like I didn't see this coming. I've been writing about the decline of C for years, predicting that it would be displaced by newer systems languages with better safety guarantees and more coherent designs. It wasn't better language design alone that did it, though. It's how good LLMs now are at generating code from specs and prompts. This means I can speak a program into existence in Rust or Go without any more effort than would be required to conjure it up in C. What makes this particularly dramatic is that I never learned to hand-code in Rust. And now - I don't need to. What a long, strange trip it's been.

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Thanks Mark! Yes, it has partly come about by design, and partly by accident. Later on I realised that there is common thread behind all of these things. And really the focus is on strengthening community. And economy. E.g. for Yuh Gettin Tru, one of the main goals is to reduce commerce "leaking" overseas. e.g. someone wanted to buy a high-speed SD card for their camera here. They ordered off Amazon, as they didn't know they could find and buy one locally. That is now a sale that has leaked over to the US, as opposed to a sale locally in this economy. These are specific issues that affect Small Island Developing States in particular. We are 280,000 people in Barbados. It is important to be able to find things locally if possible and keep the funds circulating in the local economy as much as possible. But we have the "messy reality" of SIDS commerce to deal with. There isn't Amazon here. Much of the commerce is word-of-mouth, in cash, via Whatsapp. Similarly, AI in general, whist English is the official language here, AI doesn't know the local context. It can't spell the local names correctly, it doesn't know the local businesses, or geography. So even if an AI can understand a local there is no point the AI suggesting solutions that would work in San Francisco or London, but not here. I see a lot of this as "public infrastructure" and there is a sentiment here that we either need to try and take control of these things, or end up beholden to some other nation. Digital sovereignty. Historically the Caribbean has been subject to a lot of extractive industries (putting it gently!), this is a chance to change that. Interestingly a few weeks ago the UNDP published a paper that specifically talks about this. Yes, modern AI models are trained on different languages, but can they understand the local culture and context in which they are being asked to operate. This is what I want to address. undp.org/publications/introd…

🇧🇧 This is much much better. Not just the logo, but the actual design system and showing how it is used. This is the difference between good design and mediocre nonsense.

Decided after about 6 years since the last refresh, I should actually update my profile here to better reflect what I actually do. New bio and a pinned thread on stuff I'm working on

Hahahahahaha... Facebook throwback to me presenting a gala awards event during lockdown

The comments are doing me today 🤣🤣🤣

Real-world crypto utility in action: @Ripple has partnered with Women’s World Banking and @PulaAdvisors to launch an RLUSD-powered parametric insurance pilot in Uganda 🇺🇬 The initiative will protect ~3,000 smallholder farmers (mostly women) against agricultural and health shocks with automated, instant payouts via mobile money. A massive step forward for financial inclusion and blockchain utility. 🌐 womensworldbanking.org/insig…

90s Poodle-hair Rock...but make it Bajan. I'm loving this!