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Christian
Note: Views expressed are my own and do not reflect those of any current and past employers.
THE RANDOM FOREST Long Read:
When I first started studying machine learning over a decade ago, I learned that you remove noise from what you’re observing. Noise is randomness. Randomness is unwanted data. During my last two international trips, it occurred to me that by tuning out the noisy parts of life, you may be missing something that matters.
It started with a random diversion to Haneda Airport. I was supposed to connect to Narita after a business trip to India. Thanks to bad weather, I spent a day sightseeing with my luggage in tow on the streets of Tokyo. I eventually stumbled on a Japanese garden, covered in raked sand. Here, you’re reminded of mono no aware - all things must pass. George Harrison got the point.
by tuning out the noisy parts of life, you may be missing something that matters
For our summer family vacation, my wife and I planned a trip to Costa Rica, using the Claude sandbox environment I built to plan family activities. When it started pouring rain on our hike through the rainforest, we said, Pura vida, put on ponchos and went to watch sloths instead. For the second part of the trip, we went to the beach. Having young kids is like finding seashells. It’s messy and fun, and you can’t take the coral with you when your time at the beach has passed.
mono no aware - all things must pass
This got me reflecting on what I’ve learned over the last year experimenting with AI agents. For resources on this (so that all of you who are here to read about AI don’t unsubscribe), keep reading. I remember what Professor James Landay told us during his lecture. He said that human messiness is the hard part to automate. I’d take that one step further to say that appreciating the mess is most of the point. When we automate away things like human connection, play and experimentation, we miss the point.
appreciating the mess is most of the point
The pura vida vibes haven’t faded yet as I head back from the airport straight to band practice. We’re playing a show next month. The best thing about our band group text is the social media links about how music should be fun and not too rehearsed. As the Catalina Wine Mixer scene reminds us, “The point is, don’t lose your dinosaur.”
Tactical AI Resources:
I’m sharing resources from the agentic AI program I’ve been participating in through the UC Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence (RDI). I‘m also including some of the agents I’ve built, which now run on Claude Fable through model context protocol servers. For my next newsletter, I’ll share how I’ve started using this stack to improve itself.
Agentic AI summit concluding Berkeley RDI program
𝜏3-Bench benchmark, a simulation framework originally built by Sierra to test fintech customer service agents - I’ve adapted it to answer questions about my newsletter
Getting started documentation for Claude Code
Tricks from coding communities I’m part of, which remind me: Keep calm and don’t tokenmax
Tips for vibe coding when you need something less technical
Agents I built, which you can remix
Interactive advisor agent, which will guide you through all the resources in my newsletters
