TL;DR
I created an interactive timeline of AI updates. If you work with AI and have a hard time keeping up, I gotchu.
Why?
Creating massive resources is my Catcher in the Rye. It’s a compulsion. This one I wasn’t going to share with the world though. It started out in a jenky timeline tool that wasn’t runway ready, and it was missing features I’d need to share something publicly. So I rolled up my sleeves, fired up ChatGPT and Claude, and started coding. Being able to create tools with the features I wish more tools had is one of the greatest pleasures of my life.
Except when my code doesn’t work. Then I hate everything. đź‘€
I hope it will help you keep up with the dizzying pace of AI innovation.
Features
Tooltips
Each section of the timeline has tooltips to guide you in how to get the most out of it. I went with tooltips to minimize the need for text in my dashboard.
Filters
You can filter the timeline and the table by company, tag, and/or search term. If you search, your search term will be highlighted in the table for ease of scanning.
You can also filter both the timeline and table by clicking a company and/or tag pill in the table. (Who spoils you? 👉🙋‍♀️)
Timeline
This is where the magic happens. Each update is given a card with a tail that extends to the x axis. If you want more information about the update, click its card and the table will filter to just that update.
You can navigate the timeline by panning (i.e., dragging) or using the zoom buttons in the upper-left corner of the timeline.
If you want to make the timeline bigger, to view more updates at one time, simply the drag the gray bar at the bottom of the timeline. If you’re on Chrome (at least on a Mac), the global filter labels will move to the bottom of their container. If that bothers you as much as it does me, refresh the page and they should sober up again. This bug bothers me a lot (enough to do the demo in Safari) but not enough to remove the functionality. (jQuery is a 👸.)
Table
The table has a few notable features:
- Sort: You can sort by any column (except the Source column for obvious reasons). It defaults to date in descending order to float the latest updates to the top.
- Description: I summarize each announcement with high-level notes.
- Source: Click the link icon to open the source in a new tab.
- Company: This is specifically the company that’s innovating on AI in some way (e.g., OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, etc). So if there’s an update about OpenAI partnering with the Associated Press (based on a true story), I will just list OpenAI. Click a pill to filter the table and timeline; click it again to remove the filter. (Or remove it from the global filter.)
- Tag: There are almost 50 tags. These enable you to explore to see similar updates. Just like the company pills, these are also filters.
Feedback
If you have a suggestion or correction, feel free to share it with me via the form below the dashboard.
Coming Soon…
I was actually working on another tool that will help teams building AI apps to be more strategic in their approach to choosing models and paused it to create this tool. I also plan to start a video series on AI strategy to share some of the biggest blockers I’ve seen with AI projects. I’m leaning toward calling it ‘Tips from the Trenches’.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with really smart data scientists and developers, so my intention will not be to criticize people, just processes that have at times had disastrous results. My hope is others can learn from these mistakes—many of which were made early on when everyone was building the plane as they flew it.
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