This week I (finally) finished revisions on a chapter I’m contributing to a forthcoming book of essays on education and AI. More specifically, on the many metaphors we apply to machine learning systems — there’s one! — and how easily they can distort our thinking about what these tools are, including but not limited to LLMs. (Yes, this is what that crowdsourcing I did a while back was about!) I signed off on the final revisions twenty minutes ago, and it is such a good feeling to have finished this particular thing.

Finishing things, in my experience, often has :

• Satisfaction that the thing is done, when I have done it well. (Not so much if I have not done it well: but I try not to let that happen!)

• Relief that the thing is done: even for projects I love, there often comes a moment when I am ready to finish it, or at least to finish a given phase of it, and move on to something new.

• A bit of letdown. I most often feel this after finishing a race: months of preparation, capped off in a massive expenditure of effort over the course of a couple of hours. I expect that if or when I get a major musical work performed, it may have much of the same in it.

No letdown on this particular one, but definitely both satisfaction and relief!