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Lester Solbakken
Background
Lester Solbakken is co-founder of Hornet, a retrieval infrastructure company focused on high-precision context delivery for agentic AI systems. Formerly studied computational neuroscience. Author of influential writing on the failure modes of agentic retrieval.
Articles in This Vault
- Mutually Assured Distraction — why better retrieval and better reasoning can make agentic systems less reliable
Key Contributions
- MAD (Mutually Assured Distraction) framework: locally rational retrieval+reasoning optimizations lead to global instability
- Analysis of distractor-induced inverse scaling: more CoT under noisy context → lower accuracy
- UDCG metric advocacy (negative utility for distractors)
- Dynamic-k and abstention as defensive retrieval strategies