ARC E-Newsletter 9/18/25: AI - Great but Stuck in a Box
Aprovecho Research Center
AI: Great but Stuck in a Box
It’s great to have colleagues whose opinions are trusted. Dr. Larry Winiarski was usually right, by which I mean, that when we built and tested his inventions they might not have been perfect but were significant improvements, good starting places for further development. I always appreciated talking to Dr. Tom Reed, inventor of the TLUD, for the same reasons. Hui Yang Shen, the head of Shengzhou Stove Manufacturer, has been an almost-always-right resource about manufacturing. In 1987, Dr. Sam Baldwin wrote a book on cook stoves that I still refer to frequently.
In the same way, Google’s Gemini AI has become an interesting resource for me. It has been fascinating to encounter such an accessible way to find another reasonable opinion. One question to AI every morning has become part of my routine although I don’t have time for more. Google AI gives many references for each summary and I try to at least scan them.
At ARC, we have the great advantage of doing experiments to learn. Reading what others have written is interesting, however I much prefer and believe that progress is faster when doing iterative development of prototypes under an emissions hood. As importantly, going into the field to do R&D with cooks, distributors, manufacturers, etc. is necessary to make things that work. Reading alone cannot get you to success but it is a sturdy third leg of the stool: Literature searches, lab and field R&D.
Glad whenever I get out of the box.
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