This is a great, encouraging article. The key words are "as we know it". So many historical examples to make the point. https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-end-of-programming-as-we-know-it/

It's great to see that Google is serious about science. First there was AlphaFold, now this.

AI is so vast, there won't be a single winner. It's like saying who is best on the internet, or who is best with electricity. I expect specialization over time. For example, one of the reasons ChatGPT is so well known is because they focus on the consumer market. Claude is well known among programmers because it is so good at coding, etc.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyz6e9edy3o

Claude 3.7 Sonnet is live, with optional extended thinking mode
https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-3-7-sonnet

Introducing Claude Code too (Research preview):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJpK3YTTKZ4

I've pasted some additional links as the comments to the previous post, but this one probably deserve as top-level post. This is what to expect in coming years, tweet by Alex Albert:

Last year, Claude was in the assist phase.

In 2025, Claude will do hours of expert-level work independently and collaborate alongside you.

By 2027, we expect Claude to find breakthrough solutions to problems that would've taken teams years to solve.

I'm personally excited about this launch, Amazon Alexa+, and have been waiting for it for quite a long time (it was delayed a couple of times). Besides the presumed extra revenue for Anthropic (IDK the details, except that Claude is used inside), it is about freaking time we have smart voice assistants, don't you think? I had high hopes for Siri, but Apple Intelligence was a complete disappointment. Turns out intelligence still requires a lot more compute than an iPhone can offer. Crossing my fingers for Alexa+, but not sure how I'll use it yet.

Anyone using Google home devices? Do you have Gemini there? Is it good?

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/new-alexa-generative-artificial-intelligence

In other personal news, I'm super proud of my wife who joined AWS (Amazon Connect) as SDE Apprentice this week 🤩. As much innovation and excitement happening in the AI bubble, I'm pretty sure her growth is faster than mine. This is just a beginning.

Re my wife at AWS: she went through https://adadevelopersacademy.org, a bootcamp oriented for minorities in tech, including women. It is a bit hard to get inside (high competition), but those who get through get to study full stack engineering for 6mo and on completion are pretty-much-guaranteed an internship/apprenticeship in companies like Amazon, Oracle, SAP. She was in another bootcamp before that, and she has been learning to code for the past 5y or so.

From my vague/basic understanding, the goal of the organization is to increase diversity in tech, so they are focused on minorities. Consider applying if you qualify.

🇺🇿 I'll be in Tashkent on March 12-21, to give a talk about AI at the CAU Tech Summit (the one with Steve Wozniak 🍏).

👋🏼 I'd be happy to meet and chat about anything on March 14-20. Earlier days I'll probably be still jet lagged and later days I'll be busy preparing for the talk. I plan to go to ngBreakfast (@ngtashkent). I haven't been to Uzbekistan for 5y so I'm looking forward to people, places and food 😄. I still plan to work that week, at least half time. Feel free to leave a comment or DM me if you want to meet. Thanks

Weird things happen in AI world. This Seattle newspaper listed names of some people in my office. Why? Good thing I've hidden that I live in Seattle area from LinkedIn. We had protests against AI in SF, including last week. Some people got threats.

I've hidden the fact that I work for Anthropic on my LinkedIn. I don't know how this AI thing will go down but I won't be surprised if such attention would be only distracting/undesirable. I fully expect to get some AI hate at some point.

I don't consider this channel a highly visible place. Telegram isn't popular US.

In case you want to learn Transformers at scale, this mini-book is recommended. Reading it now on the airplane to Tashkent.

Re CAU Tech Summit: I speak at 10:10 (March 20)

If you can, please give Steve Wozniak a visit. The organizers of this event are actually the sole reason I am able to attend other events here in Tashkent, because they purchased me an airplane ticket 🙏🏼, and that's the talk I'm preparing for the most.

🔥 AI MEETUP FROM GDG TASHKENT COMING NEXT WEEK!

Join us next Wednesday for an exclusive Live Demo with Nodir Turakulov!

Nodir Turakulov is an ex-Googler, currently working on Claude AI at Anthropic, specializing in high-scale distributed systems and engineering/research productivity.

Before that, he was an Area Team Lead at Google Chrome’s Developer Infrastructure, specializing in Continuous Integration, and a Principal Engineer at AWS ECS, CloudFormation and Amazon Q.

What to expect:
💻 Live Claude Code Demo;
⭐️ Insights from an industry expert;
🎙️ Interactive Q&A;
🍕 Iftar with speaker.

Don’t miss this chance to meet top speaker and see possibilities of AI Agents in action - sign up now!

👀 Date: March 19, 2025
🕙 Time: 17:00
🏛 Venue: IMPACT.T Technology Hub

🎟️ Get your FREE TICKET here:
https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-tashkent-presents-ai-meetup-with-nodir-turakulov/

‼️ IMPORTANT: The number of tickets is limited, so make sure to reserve your spot in advance.

@gdgtashkent

I need to cancel the tomorrow event

Hey, folks. There was a misunderstanding on my part about the exclusivity of my participation in local events. It's a common sense that, in retrospect, I should have realized without much explicit communication to me. I think canceling is 100% fair / the right thing to do.

Sorry about that,
-Nodir

Claude can now search the web

This is pretty useful to see the latest info and avoid hallucinations. Claude automatically searches for fresh info when it feels like it can help. It can do multiple searches until it thinks that it has the answer.

Enable it on the phone: the plus button -> manage tools -> search.

https://www.anthropic.com/news/web-search

Claude Code can search the web too! You can paste a link to documentation and have Claude Code read it. Animation below.

https://x.com/_catwu/status/1902785540354871599

This trip was certainly an adventure to remember.

Tashkent exceeded my outdated expectations. There was a lot of more technology than 5y ago. Never in my life I expected programming to be considered cool among children of high-up government employees whose job isn't related to tech - in my time it was mostly geeks like me who enjoyed coding. It is great that so many people speak English - when I was in one of the universities I heard swearing in English 😄. Of course there is still a lot of work to do, but it is the trajectory and velocity that I care about more, and it is good.

I'm so happy the government has decided to seriously invest into education some time ago, in particular English and computer science. I can see the fruits of that great decision. I don't know who made it and when, but I can only imagine how much work and persuasion it required to get it funded, and someone kept pushing.

My one worry is that Uzbekistan is currently GPU-poor. I expect countries with stronger AI to be more powerful and grow much faster than others. I expect the intelligence to be the new currency but that requires AI chips (GPUs, TPUs, Trainium/Inferentia, Groq) and Uzbekistan barely has any. It is a complicated question involving special licenses and is generally above my pay grade. I tried to bring awareness to the urgency and importance of this question in meetings with the ministry of digital tech, with Kamran Gulamov (CAU rector) and with Jakhongir Artikkhodjayev (AKFA owner, former Tashkent mayor), but not sure how much progress I've made. I still don't have a solid clear explanation / description of a future where this is critical. I'm glad certain organizations are working on this, and this work is absolutely critical (do not leak details in the comments).

With AI, I feel like a lot can change. I mean a lot a lot, although I have no idea how long it will take. With so many changes, some things will simply end, and there will be the last one moment in anything. With this attitude embedded in me, I learned to cherish each moment. Thank you to those who spent time with me in Tashkent.