LLMs are engines. Harnesses are everything else—the wheels, brakes, dashboard, GPS—that turn a raw engine into a useful vehicle. First in a series on harnesses for the open knowledge commons.

I took a look at English Wikipedia pageviews for ~4,000 articles about careers. The numbers are grim: the median is down 28% from pre-COVID, with a huge drop in the last year.

Some graphs about reading and writing on the internet. Less a story than a Rorschach test.

Following up on last week's post, I looked at 5,000 "Vital Articles" across eight major-language Wikipedias. Articles about math, physical sciences and tech are waaaay down, while people, geography, and history hold up far better—regardless of which language they're in. Article freshness matters too—but not as much.

Generalist LLMs are not lawyers, and evaluating them that way is a waste of time. Evaluating LLMs with useful specialized prompts (and eventually, with specialized legal harnesses) is where the work must happen.

Reviewing a book about a multi-billion-dollar contract bug—and what it means for the profession's arrogant response to LLMs.