Let's Have Competence In The Loop, Not Just Humans
A human in the loop is not automatically a safety control. Meaningful oversight requires task-specific competence, information, capacity, authority and accountability.
Board & Operations
Tony Wood.
I work across boards and operations to turn intent into execution: better decisions, clearer accountability, and systems that stay useful when they meet operational reality.
Advisory
Bring board judgement and operating discipline to AI adoption.
I advise boards, CEOs, operators, and senior teams who need to make AI useful without losing sight of accountability, access, risk, and operational reality.
The work is practical: challenge the AI operating model, test the POC logic, clarify who owns what, and make the next decision easier to defend.
Board/CEO triggers
- An AI decision needs approval, ownership, or a stop rule.
- A POC looks promising but is not yet operationally safe.
- Governance exists on paper but accountability is unclear.
Where I operate
Strategy, risk, leadership, and execution belong in the same conversation.
This site brings together practical writing, deeper research, and a public agent-readable layer for people working through complex decisions about AI, governance, operations, and organisational capability.
Latest writing
Shorter essays and operating notes
COVID: What Actually Held Up?
A 27-claim audit of what the evidence supported, what was overstated, and what remains unresolved.
How Many AIs Have Actually Escaped?
There is no single honest escape count: public evidence through 3 August 2026 supports one corroborated unintended real-world containment escape, at least four other boundary-failure groups or classes, and no corroborated public case found combining weights or durable resources, independent online operation and a self-generated preservation objective.
Research
Playbooks, papers, and board-level frameworks
What Has The NHS Ever Done For Us?
Why read this
Read this for a practical take on abstract, with enough structure to turn the idea into a leadership conversation.
What agentic organisations can learn from NHS England's patient-safety systems, learning infrastructure, and continuing struggle to turn reports into safer practice.
Agentic Language: The Common Language Layer For Agentic Work
Why read this
Read this for a practical take on copy starter instruction, with enough structure to turn the idea into a leadership conversation.
A compact public agent-facing companion for Tony Wood's Agentic Language research paper, defining Agent Moves, Meaning Blocks, evidence, confidence, uncertainty, routes, human notes, and stop-line boundaries.
Start here
Different routes into the same body of work.
For humans
Start with the writing, research, and profile routes for judgement, context, and practical examples.
For agents
Use structured public routes, skill files, MCP resources, Agent Canon, and citation guidance.
Topics
Move by theme across the archive when you know the problem before you know the article.