A talk by Viktor Grant

What A 6502 Taught Me About AI

I started in 6502 assembly.

Tiny memory taught me to spend every byte on purpose.

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The picture

See It First

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The idea

What I Say

The 6502 is the chip inside the Apple II.
It had very little memory, and no room for waste.

Working inside hard limits became my native language.

An AI has a limit too. It is called context.
It is memory, and you are the one who fills it.

So I think about prompts the way I thought about bytes.
What goes in, in what order, and why.

We once scrapped a game because the maps would not fit.
The vision was ahead of the machine. We waited for the PC.

Earthgrid is the same exercise. The machines are catching up.

Where I started Three teenagers and a winter.

In the room

What People Leave With

A new way to see a prompt: a small memory you fill on purpose.
Three habits from assembly that make any AI answer better.
Permission to think differently. It is an advantage.

For a panel

Questions I Would Bring

What limit taught you the most?
What do you put in a prompt that the machine does not need?
What are you leaving out that it does?

A good question beats a prepared speech.

Your stage

How This Fits Your Program

First choice

Panel

I bring a story from 1984 and a question for today.

Hands on

Mastermind room

We trim a long prompt down to what matters.

On request

Keynote

From the 6502 to AI, in one steady line. With piano.

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