Dru Knox

Founder / CEO of @overworldai. Formerly @google, @airtable, and @grammarly. Wanna-be fantasy author inspired by dnd and anime.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

I'm SUPER excited to finally share what I've been working on for the last year!! Try it out and let me know what you think 😁

Learn more: https://t.co/0KlcYtofHE
Join the beta: https://t.co/auI2XtomSW

[Overworld @overworldai]

It's happening! We're launching in public beta 🚀🎉

Overworld is the AI-worldbuilding assistant that lives in your Discord. Check it out at https://t.co/bnXBTaj32n.

���� Search your world in natural language. Never waste time hunting through your notes again!
✍️ Break through writer's block with AI-assisted lore creation. Forget generic character generators!
🤝 Engage your players and fans by letting them add lore to your world.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

That feeling when you're in a random, mass consumer product and you type a Vim command out of habit... and it works

[Dru Knox @drufball]

One of the best ways I've found to use AI - for work and for fantasy writing - is to ask for intentionally conflicting perspectives. For work, it helps stress test ideas or get a diverse set of variants. And for world-building it makes for instantly rich politics and factions :)

[Overworld @overworldai]

The Ferrys spotlight continues with a deep dive into the city's religion!

Two religions dominate spiritual life in Ferrys. The Cult of Progress reveres the Mechanists as divine agents due to their mastery of magic and technology. The Cult is as an unofficial extension of the Mechanist Guild, pushing propaganda and handling tasks too unsavory for the Mechanists, such as forging alliances with the gangs. On the other side is the Order of the Silent Veil. The Veil embraces a more spiritual and contemplative path, seeking inner peace and detachment from the darkness that plagues the city. They strive to protect the poor and the oppressed from the damages wrought by the gangs of Ferrys and the rampant technological progress of the Mechanists.

#fantasy #steampunk #worldbuilding

[Dru Knox @drufball]

Ferrys is a gritty steampunk-noir world that I made with Overworld. It's a fun, easy way to kickstart a new world for a project! It's amazing how far you can get in 10-15 mins and no more battling writers block! ✍️💪🏼

[Overworld @overworldai]

Lore from the world of Ferrys, created by Overworld:

Skyport Veridion, the heart of Ferrys' underworld, is a sprawling labyrinth of stalls, tents, and makeshift structures, teeming with people from all walks of life. The market stretches as far as the eye can see, its dark alleys and crowded thoroughfares illuminated by flickering gaslights that cast eerie shadows upon the worn cobblestones. The air is heavy with the acrid scent of smog that hangs low in the sky, churned up by the constant comings and goings of steam-powered airships. The market is divided into a chaotic sprawl of circular thoroughfares, each centered on a massive airship docking station. Each ship dock is home to a different clientele, from pleasure-seeking nobles to rowdy gang members smuggling contraband.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

Doubt is a powerful tool so long as it motivates proactive investigation and has an obvious resolution path. If you ask yourself "what would convince me this was the right direction?" and nothing comes to mind, doubt is probably just slowing you down.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

A useful heuristic to decide whether doubt is healthy vs. holding back progress: does the doubt spur you to take concrete action to validate your concerns and move forward? Or are you just stalling/avoiding decisions where you're uncomfortable with uncertainty?

[Dru Knox @drufball]

Finally, the main thing under your control is motivation. If you're struggling to make a change, don't berate yourself. Spend more time clarifying why the change is important to you. Make the positive outcome really strong in your mind and you'll naturally gravitate toward it.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

The most impactful realization I've had to make goals and themes for the new year stick without over stressing myself is to be kind and patient with faults in the short-term, but aim for better in the long-term. This mindset helps me focus on small repeated steps over time.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

I also think of procrastination like friction. Static friction is stronger than kinetic friction, and starting a task is harder than continuing it. I like to set goals of "do X for at least 1 min each day". I can always muster the energy for 1 min, and then I go for longer.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

Many companies have a written culture but still drown in meetings and scattered documentation. Focus on a reading culture first. If ppl seek answers in docs, the writing will follow naturally and actually get used.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

when technology lowers the barriers to contribution, there's always a reactionary push against the flood of newly empowered entrants and how they're "not doing it properly". That opinion rarely ages well

[Dru Knox @drufball]

A lot of risks we need to figure out with generative ai. But the idea that it "commoditizes" writing/art does not resonate with me, and feels vaguely elitist/NIMBY-ish

If a bunch of ppl can earn a living with writing when they otherwise couldn't have, that seems great?

[Shreya Shankar @sh_reya]

I’ve been nervous for some time now, not because I think AI is going to automate away writing-heavy jobs, but because the act of writing has been increasingly commoditized to where I’m not sure whether people know how to tell good writing from bad writing. Useful from useless.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

@sh_reya Also unclear how much of it is ppl caring about writing less, vs the cost of writing/distributing has decreased and so ppl who don't value writing as much find it worth doing now

[Dru Knox @drufball]

@sh_reya I agree with the observed trend, but it's hard for me to believe that its strongly connected to generative ai. These tools don't have any widespread adoption yet, so the current change must be rooted elsewhere

[Dru Knox @drufball]

@MatthewJBar Do you think retrieval is still the most likely approach for up-to-date knowledge, as opposed to newer directions like chain-of-thought?

[Dru Knox @drufball]

1. The wiki page on Second Systems should be required reading for all new eng/PMs

2. The simple, pure system you envision will only be 20-30% better when the hidden complexity surfaces

3. If you want to rewrite a system from scratch, probably don't. Try to upgrade in place

[Sarah Drasner @sarah_edo]

If you have a lot of hubris with no curiosity, you might not understand:
- how to build upon lessons learned from the old system
- the opportunity cost of trying something new
- the complexity of a massive rewrite, or why the system became complex for the current features

[Dru Knox @drufball]

A lot of the paradigms were also developed at a time when Google's scale and tech stacks across the industry were simpler, so they've likely outgrown the concepts as their problems have become more complex, but haven't updated the books/blogs

[Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct]

It’s a bit like the SRE books written by and promoted by Google. Quite a lot of it is aspirational and not everyone at Google follows everything described in the book.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

@cramforce @__apf__ Every time I use the pressure cooker I feel like I'm making some sort of dark, monkey's paw style bargain. That time HAS to come from somewhere.

[Dru Knox @drufball]

@ani_c_mohan Right now it's definitely shifted. But a lot of that is because I don't have full faith in the system or a good mental model of where it needs my attention. My guess is effort will go down over time, and it's certainly more interesting/fun

[Dru Knox @drufball]

Got a new car with modern driver assist features and it's amazing how much it echoes discussions around generative ai. I spend much more time monitoring for edge cases and mistakes

Human as editor/supervisor is going to be a paradigm shift that spans all our tools