You know the quote from Socrates, or maybe it’s Aristotle, that says something about “you are what you do every day,” I think Adam Grant’s version of this one is even better - “every action is a vote for the person you want to be.” Well, I have been thinking about all of the things that I do every day, a bit of a new year “begin again” inventory to make sure that the things I do line up with the person I want to be in the future and to make sure that I am aware of what I am doing and why I do it. During my journaling ritual this AM, I realized how this makes my inner archaeologist clap with glee. I am leaving behind the breadcrumbs for myself and maybe others in the distant future who see our writing and wonder what else we are thinking. I have been creating lineage for a while now on how I know what I know and do what I do. I have intentionally created documentation of my thoughts and realized how much I treasure this. I recognize that a massive value can be ascribed to providing lineage and provenance, and it is easy to do daily, building a habit like compound interest that enables me to go back in time and glimpse a memory of that day.
So bear with me for a moment. Here is how my thoughts came together regarding this understanding.
Suppose I was asked to testify about something that happened a year ago, and I handed another person a picture of a single journal entry related to that day. In that case, they might go - “Well, how do I know that it wasn’t written this morning?” - Fair point, and so I show the provenance of the journal page that existed in the journal that contained about 3 months of entries. That may be enough, but what if I showed the human the 20 or so journals that contained years of entries? What if I pointed out that I use a different color, my handwriting is different on different days, and there are coffee stains or food crumbs that could be carbon-dated, etc.? All of this “proof” of showing the work I did daily makes that one journal entry I needed for the testimony valuable. Because I can show the lineage, the path I took to create the journal entry based on my daily habit, and the provenance of the origin of that piece of evidence - it is understood as a valid piece of data. The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that Validity “implies being supported by objective truth or generally accepted authority.” An objective truth requires well-grounded or justifiable evidence that multiple people can assert.
Folks always tell me they instinctively understand and find value in what we do with Bast AI, but they can’t quite put language around why they understand what we are doing. There is a statement I get a lot from people: “Of course, it matters what context you find the data in,” but “does it really matter enough to pay $ for that context if you are just using AI to correct your writing with Grammarly or generate a blog post?” I often smile at these questions because I don’t have an easy answer. Knowing why you know something, do something, or why a system that humans build does something - requires work. It has taken us years to create an AI system that can show its work - show the provenance and lineage of every output and show why the AI system gave the result that it did at the time that a human requested an output. We are now finding ways to make this accessible to everyone. We have built a system that can provide " valid " evidence backed up with a lineage that can’t be “faked” and a provenance that many other humans can verify.
My journey of building the habit of journaling daily - aka my archaeology- is a proxy for a fundamental truth: we measure what we treasure. We are the things we do every day, and our actions are a vote for the people we wish to become. Placing intention behind these actions, thoughts, and habits is a gift, a treasure trove of understanding. I treasure what I measure, whether through my coffee-stained journal pages or how our Bast AI software meticulously tracks all choices humans make to build their own explainable AI. If you have done the work of understanding how you know what you know and why you do the things you do, you are building the “proof” of the lineage of validity. You can build your truth, and you have the power and choice.
Follow my work and join us at Bast AI to discover how we understand artificial intelligence by measuring every step of its reasoning process, creating a transparent lineage that proves the value of context. Every interaction with our AI system shows that we treasure not just the end result but also the entire journey of how we arrived there. I invite you to join us in building a future where artificial intelligence doesn't just provide answers but honors the importance of lineage by showing its work with the same rich context and verifiable hiherstory that makes my journals so valuable. Because in both human and artificial intelligence, understanding how we know what we know isn't just meaningful – it's treasured.