Location: Takoma Park, MD, USA
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Python, LLM pipeline orchestration (130M+ API calls across Claude/GPT/Grok), JavaScript
Portfolio: https://www.michaeldouma.com
Email: m5@inotherwords-studio.com
My interactive article on multi-word expressions in English trended #1 on Hacker News in March. I help make systems easy to use, both the first time and the 1000th.
Currently at the U.S. Treasury as an AI specialist, but I want to get back to a smaller team. I've led cross-functional teams of 9 to 40. Last year, I launched Linguabase, a semantic graph of 400K terms and 63M relationships from 130M LLM inferences. Before that, I ran a word-game studio funded by a $295K NSF SBIR. Past work includes SpicyNodes (40M users), ProstateCalculator (neural-net health AI, 1.5M patients), and time.gov. I judge games for IGF, MAGFest, CODiE, and GEE.
Looking for an applied AI role at a smaller company where I can build. Developer tools, learning platforms, knowledge products, creative AI, brain health. Anywhere the core problem is some version of 'this is powerful but nobody can figure it out.'
Both your points are solid. I think I'm pretty liberal about opposites, I can see opposites to major political and cultural figures too. You are right that the mahjong presentation loses rigor if there's not enough downside from choosing the wrong sequence. The mobile mahjong games often have a small fill-tray so the player needs to really focus on the sequence.
the older generation of vectors, like word2vec, compress to one sense of a word, but even if we ignore polysemy, opposites have a lot in common. So for any antonym pair, they would not be minus-1, they would be actually pretty close.
The big challenge is when we go beyond antonyms with clear scales like heat, speed, size. To me "as of now" is recent, and therefore opposite to "old". I would like a word other than "opposite" or "antonym" or "contrast" that captures a wider range.
Historical look back at old articles on this popular word game.
February 15, 2022 - bigthink.com
Long before the Wordle mania, there was the crossword puzzle craze. And newspapers around the world condemned them as an “invasive weed” that caused mental illnesses and even murder.
Location: Takoma Park, MD, USA
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Python, Swift, JavaScript, semantic systems, LLM orchestration
Portfolio: https://www.michaeldouma.com
Email: m5@inotherwords-studio.com
I had an article trending on HN last week about "words with spaces" in English. I can help you make your complicated system be more usable for your consumers.
I have a track record that spans from govt services (I created time.gov in 1999), visualizations (SpicyNodes, 40M users), AI-based health info before AI was a thing (ProstateCalculator, 1.5M patients), and association-based word games (two games, plus a game-centric game studio, NSF funded w/ $295K SBIR). I also judge games for several awards (IGF, MagFest, CODiE, GEE, Serious Games).
How can I help you? Maybe your project needs an overall product vision, or incremental improvements that help first-time and long-time users know and (enjoy!) using your product.
I would love to work with your team in a product/design leadership role, at a smallish-company. I can work with developer tools, learning platforms, knowledge products, brain health, creative AI.
My bad. there's a little sidebar about it, but I put it lower after the chart because there wasn't room. You might still not find my logic on the 15% satisfying, but it's there.
Ha — you're probably right that it would have been less controversial. But I kept it precisely because it's arguable. Added a parenthetical acknowledging the HN debate and framing it as on-the-fence by design
Hey Michael, great project! If you don't mind me testing you, as a word game builder, what do you think about the latest developments of international policies?
Added a note: "'I love you' isn't opaque, but it's tight enough to put on a tile." The familiar end of the spectrum picks up collocations that are transparent but loaded — I'm not claiming they're words in the traditional sense, but they're useful vocabulary for word games, which is where I'm coming from.
> "'I love you' isn't opaque, but it's tight enough to put on a tile."
The problem with introducing phrase/sentences into a word game (let's take Scrabble) is that you'd spend half the night with your friends arguing over what is and is not acceptable with the only litmus test being its... corpus frequency?
Dictionaries would be ruined if they could only use popular words. I guess you might be describing very early children's dictionaries, but I dont think that's your argument?
Yeah — added a note below the slider that the obscure end is noise (LLM artifacts, jargon fragments, Wiktionary debris) and that where to draw the line is up to the reader. It was always intended to show the full gradient including where it breaks down, but that wasn't stated
Currently at the U.S. Treasury as an AI specialist, but I want to get back to a smaller team. I've led cross-functional teams of 9 to 40. Last year, I launched Linguabase, a semantic graph of 400K terms and 63M relationships from 130M LLM inferences. Before that, I ran a word-game studio funded by a $295K NSF SBIR. Past work includes SpicyNodes (40M users), ProstateCalculator (neural-net health AI, 1.5M patients), and time.gov. I judge games for IGF, MAGFest, CODiE, and GEE.
Looking for an applied AI role at a smaller company where I can build. Developer tools, learning platforms, knowledge products, creative AI, brain health. Anywhere the core problem is some version of 'this is powerful but nobody can figure it out.'