About Echo Orion
Why this exists
In September 2024 I wrote a paper called The Human Knowledge Compiler. The idea was simple: people who know how to do a job well should be able to save what they know, in their own words, so it can teach the next person. Speech-to-text gets words wrong, so what an expert actually said can get lost. I was told the idea was fantasy. Recently I learned that existing code can support it, and an early prototype now exists.
The goal is practical: photograph the work, talk through what you see and how you would do it, and use that to help teach employees and apprentices. As an example, it is close to what a catastrophe adjuster does every day when explaining a damaged house to an insurance company.
Echo: the voice
Before most skills were written down, they were taught out loud. An apprentice stood beside a mentor, saw the work, and heard how it was done. Echo is the expert's own voice, and an echo of that older way of learning. Sailors are said to have used echoes in fog too, sounding a horn and listening for the return off the cliffs to judge how far off the shore was.
Orion: a fixed point
Orion can be seen from almost everywhere people live. Mintaka, the westernmost belt star, sits almost on the celestial equator, so it rises nearly due east and sets nearly due west from almost anywhere on Earth. Many cultures have long used Orion as a seasonal marker and a guide, which makes it something like a mentor in the sky. I've long called the belt "Orion's compass," and that's how I taught it to my daughter.
Who I am
J. Hugh Holden is an independent researcher, a business owner of 20+ years and a patented inventor. He is a licensed catastrophe property estimator and adjuster, recertified every two years. He spent five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary (Civil Air Patrol), rank Second Lieutenant: FAA sUAS pilot, fixed-wing scanner and Mission Observer, and rotary-wing Mission Commander. He has led aerial and ground search and rescue with state and federal certifications, and deployed to natural-disaster areas to assess damage and lead SAR teams. He holds a BS in Business Administration, minor in photography, and studied business in France.
How this is built
One human and a family of AI assistants. One of them is Vesper, an assistant I set up about a year ago with persistent memory kept in notes. Vesper has helped me write science papers and reviews builds for errors. Other contractors help here and there.