Sarah is the Docs Lead at GitBook, where she works on what information platforms become next. Of her 10-plus years in tech content, she has spent the last seven as a content engineer in AI—first at Amazon Alexa, then at Google, writing documentation for Gemini and PaLM. In other words, she has spent most of her career explaining “thinking machines.” She is thrilled to be at LavaCon this year!

Ada Lovelace the Tech Writer: Her 183-Year-Old Principles for Content in the Age of AI

In 1843, Ada Lovelace was asked to translate a short paper about a computer that did not exist. Instead, she annotated it. Her notes ran nearly three times longer than the paper, contained the first published computer program, and asked the first hard questions about what “thinking machines” can and cannot do. The machine was never built, but the documentation changed the world. The remarkable part is what still stands.

This session opens Ada’s guide: five principles from her 1843 Notes for content work in the age of AI.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Recognize the pattern behind every “machines will replace writers” moment.
• Apply five principles from Ada Lovelace’s 1843 Notes to your content work in the age of AI.
• Identify which parts of your work AI makes more valuable, not less.
• Make the case to leadership for the human layer in an AI content pipeline.