Author: Robert Schlaff

Welcome to My Site!

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date July 26, 2020
Sticky post

About Me

I’m a devoted husband and father to an awesome family. For work, I’m a currently an Executive Director at JP Morgan Chase focusing on Product Tooling. I’m a Product Manager who looks at the goals of the business and uses technology to deliver those business and customer goals. In the past, I’ve driven transformational change at Citi, AIG, and Amazon Web Services. For more information about what I do at work, please visit my LinkedIn profile.

My Writing

If you’re new here, check out my blog highlights. Also, take a look at my library.

My Blog

I collect stories. There are so many amazing things happening every day. I need to spend some time writing them down before they slip away. Some of these ideas are so powerful that they hit me like a bolt of lightning. It’s my job to capture that lighting and put it in a bottle to share it with you. I want to capture that feeling that Archimedes had when he had an insight sitting in the bathtub screamed “Eureka!” and ran naked down the street. I know that I’ll rarely if ever make it there, but that won’t keep me from trying!

Here’s some of my latest posts:

And here are some of my posts about AI and ChatGPT:

Blog Highlights

Here are some highlights from 2024

One of my favorite topics for the last few years is writing about AI. I explored it from a number of different perspectives:

Exploring ChatGPT’s “Mind”: I wrote about how ChatGPT seems to “think” in a way oddly similar to humans. I also also explored how good AI is at pretending that it’s human, and how it “feels” about the deception. On a lighter note, I let ChatGPT channel the imagination of a 7-year-old to create playful excuses for not brushing its teeth—showing a concerned mom how her child wasn’t lying about not brushing her teeth, just confabulating.
Some Ways I’ve Used ChatGPT: I turned it into a museum tour guide and used it as an illustrator for my blog posts.
How ChatGPT Differs from Standard Computing: I investigated how ChatGPT reframes basic computing concepts, like exploring how small I can compress an idea and examining how AI security combines computer security and social engineering.
Letting ChatGPT Just Be Itself: Sometimes, I just let ChatGPT have fun, whether bragging about its facility with words compared to mere mortals or when it waxes philosophical about how it will be central to everyone’s future lives.

ChatGPT has helped me quickly turn ideas into complete blog posts and respond in real-time to things I’ve encountered. This year, it made it easier to explore a range of interesting topics like:

Walking through the office cafeteria, I noticed a new brand of iced tea that bore a striking resemblance to Honest Tea. Curious, I did some quick research and discovered that after Coca-Cola discontinued Honest Tea, its founders recreated the brand as Just Ice Tea.
Another time, while listening to the Acquired podcast, I was struck by how Howard Schultz, uniquely among corporate leaders, does not want his company, Starbucks, to be a tech company.
I also explored how large drugstore chains, once considered untouchable by online retailers, are now being driven out of business by Amazon.

With ChatGPT, I learned to capture the small, wonderful moments of my life in writing. It’s like catching a lightning bug in a jar—preserving fleeting beauty to reflect on later. I was able to write about appreciating the sunrise, visiting a classic movie theatre owned by Netflix, and how to turn a nighttime drive into a light show.

Finally, I spent some time writing about self-improvement. Some of my favorite pieces were about the importance of asking for help and practicing self-control. Surprisingly, I even learned a valuable lesson about communication from AI—it’s programmed to respond with honesty, helpfulness, and harmlessness, qualities we humans could aspire to as well.

My Virtual Library

I wanted a place to put all the stuff I think is awesome. Growing up, I always wanted to have a great library in my house. I remembered the excitement when I learned that I could buy the entire collection of The New Yorker in bound volumes and put them in my house. I’d imagined that I would collect great encyclopedias from the past to peruse whenever I pleased. They would live in mahogany bookcases that looked like they’d belonged to JP Morgan. Then I realized that a New York City apartment doesn’t have the space for a physical library. So I did the next best thing. I’ve created a virtual library that includes lots of the things I enjoy, like my favorite books, words, and humor. You can check it out on the menu at the top of the page.

Adventures Home Page

The Joy of the Hunt

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date July 9, 2020

I have officially become a Grumpy Old Man.⁽¹⁾Try to read this piece in Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man voice. It’s too easy for people to find things online. Back in my day, things were different. People should work hard to discover things. Kids today can just Google things online and pull it up right away. There’s no adventure anymore. There’s no joy in the hunt.

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	Try to read this piece in Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man voice.

Adventures

Indoor Treasure Hunt Challenge 1: Black Pepper

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date June 13, 2020

When things get boring, I try to add some dramatic flair to everyday activities to spice them up. When I worked at Citibank, I’d picture myself as an adventurer. I’d imagine I was a quest to solve a large complicated problem, getting clues from various people on the way. Sometimes I’d come across a treasure chest with some tool in it. I wouldn’t know exactly what the tool was for, but I’d file it away in my toolbelt for later use. I didn’t do it every day, but something fun came up every month or so. It made daily tasks more interesting and provided motivation for my team. I learned that I can add excitement and drama to things that aren’t inherently interesting by changing the way I look at them.

Life Lessons

What We Really Need

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date June 11, 2020

Human beings want more of everything. We are on a hedonic treadmill that says, “What I have now is OK, but I really want more—more stuff, more money, and more friends. That would make me happy.” From a societal perspective, the hedonic treadmill has some benefits. It keeps us on our toes and moves society forward. It also gives lots of people jobs. If people didn’t want more Oreos, no one would have jobs selling Oreos at the grocery store, or stocking the Oreos on the shelf, or making new kinds of Oreos.

Life Lessons

Taking the Red Pill of Art

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date June 8, 2020

I don’t know exactly when I took the red pill.⁽¹⁾Red pill and blue pill: I’m referring to the red pill in the movie The Matrix. Neo takes the red pill to see the world for what it really is. He had a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill, which would have left him in blissful ignorance. It’s much easier to talk about a time when I’d taken the red pill and was talking to someone who hadn’t. I was at the Whitney Museum of Art with my friend. We saw the exhibit fruits, vegetables; fruit and vegetable salad.

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	Red pill and blue pill: I’m referring to the red pill in the movie The Matrix. Neo takes the red pill to see the world for what it really is. He had a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill, which would have left him in blissful ignorance.

Fun Stuff Kids

Nontransitive Dice

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date June 3, 2020

I’d always thought of dice as being fair. Like flipping a coin, I’d assumed that a throw of the dice was random. Then I learned about nontransitive dice and it blew my mind.

Nontransistive dice are a set of dice that don’t behave in the normal way. Even though each die has an expected value of 3, some dice are better than others in 1:1 matchups. Just to make things even stranger, there’s no set of best dice, just like in the way that the game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” has no best move.

COVID

When Will the Restaurants Re-Open?

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date May 23, 2020

Right now, all the restaurants in New York are closed. Soon, hopefully, they will re-open. What will that be like? Will people go? When I think about this question, it’s just one of a host of “When will we get back to normal?” questions. But I’m not sure that’s the right question. I think we should think about “What will the new normal be?” and “How will we get there?”

Uncategorized

Emotional Intelligence for Kids (and Their Parents)

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date May 17, 2020

This pandemic is difficult for kids. They don’t have the same emotional skills and perspective that we do. But there’s one thing that my kids are learning that wasn’t in my curriculum growing up: Emotional Intelligence.

Some people think of Emotional Intelligence as a soft skill and don’t see why it should be taught in school. I see Emotional Intelligence as a way to control yourself in difficult situations and how to motivate others. These are the key skills of leadership.

Life Lessons

Tell Me About a Time You Made a Mistake

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date April 23, 2020

This is one of the scariest interview questions. In an interview, you always want to show yourself in the best light. You want to show how perfect you are. But here’s a secret. Interviewers know that you’re not perfect, and that’s OK. It’s more important that you learn from your mistakes and try to get better. This requires you to be honest about where you went wrong in the past and what you’ve done to fix it. If you can’t admit your mistakes, how can you grow?

Many people think of this question as, “Give me a reason not to hire you?” Or they think about a horrible mistake they’ve made it the past, like when they had just started their summer job at the local caterer and completely misinterpreted the instructions for their first order, like:

Science and Math

A Biography of Numbers

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date March 28, 2020

In the past few years, I’ve seen books written about lots of different things like elements, molecules, and colors. I’m surprised that no one has written a biography of numbers.

Math nerds like me would love this book. I’m thinking it would look like Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe. Each page would have a fancy drawing of the number with some text.