I owe you all an explanation of where I have been. The story starts in 2022 when ChatGPT came out and everyone decided to get rich. I know I did. So, I bullied my dear friend – a legendary lawyer – into building a legal writing tool. Within a week we knew our mission was close to impossible because of failures in GenAI.  There were imperfect products we could have sold but didn’t – dooming ourselves instead to a three-year product cycle to defeat the nightmare called LLM hallucinations.

I was the chief architect, in over my head despite starting at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab back in 1978. Then last July I had a heart attack and a stroke followed by 10 weeks in the hospital.  We looked done.

While I was recovering, my middle son, Cole, 21, took the architect job and did a better job than I ever could have.  He saved the company, leading a triumphant demo recently for a $14 billion customer.  Then on April 14th Cole went to sleep and never woke up.  I hope that never happens to you.

This picture was Cole at age 3 when he taught himself to read. Nobody taught him — he taught himself.  He picked up a book and read it then picked up another.  The kid could do anything. He conquered LLM hallucinations.  I was the architect but Cole wrote the code. I’ll explain how in a couple columns from now. For now just know my heart is broken.