Writing archive
Essays on agentic systems, governance, operations, incentives, and the work of making AI useful in real organisations.
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Could we guarantee food, shelter and care through local provision without giving the state control of everything? A thought piece about ownership, contribution, choice and the limits of political labels.
If AI removed paid employment, we would still need food, shelter, warmth and care. The question is who provides them, who owns the productive systems and how everybody gets access.
Briefing, delegation, judgement and checking are familiar management skills. They offer a useful starting point for working with AI, not permission to stop learning or reviewing.
Britain can manufacture hydrogen, fuel-cell systems and synthetic fuels. The opportunity is to match each to a useful job, with credible electricity, feedstocks, customers and costs.
AI could help people reclaim time and charities organise it. A community revival would need income security, flexible roles and funded human support, not just more technology.
Before we call another generation lazy, look at what people said about us, what effort really involves, and what credible hope could look like in an agentic world.
Rent, ambition, curiosity, care and connection can all get us moving, but wanting something, starting it and keeping going are different problems.
Britain's AI opportunity is not only inventing the technology. It is learning to put it to useful work, building human capability and selling expertise into a global market.
Britain needs people who build AI, put it to work, keep it trustworthy and maintain its physical infrastructure. How do we turn that into careers people can actually enter?
The earliest employment warning may be the junior role that is never advertised. What can Britain learn from payroll studies, task experiments and changing hiring?
More British businesses are using AI. The next test is whether they can turn scattered use into better services, stronger businesses and measurable productivity.
How I would use Mistral Vibe for business preparation, commercial decisions and a small agentic family, with clear choices about access and data.
Check original evidence, context and uncertainty before a bot carries a social-media claim into a business briefing.
AI is helping find security weaknesses in software we already use. Leaders do not need the technical detail, but they do need clear answers about updates, suppliers and passwords.
AI helped researchers uncover serious PHP vulnerabilities. That deserves some appreciation, alongside the maintainers and operators turning discoveries into protection.
My Gatton website, thirty years of changing tools, and why Britain should help more people learn to use AI safely and usefully, rather than leave it to the programmers.
A practical enterprise rollout using Grok Bot: one useful workflow, limited access, clear data boundaries and evidence before wider deployment.
A few practical tools for watching debates: separate the evidence from the performance, recognise misleading moves and ask better questions without playing the gotcha game.
More generation does not automatically connect a data centre. Britain also needs secure transmission, working substations and local connections, with practical improvements while major upgrades are built.
Britain needs electricity for its AI ambitions. I would prioritise ready projects across generation, storage and flexibility, alongside usable connections.
Putting a human in the loop sounds reassuring. But when teams and agents work around the clock, which human has the authority, context and time to intervene, and what actually stops?
Saying AI did it is rather like saying a human did it. Which one, doing what, with which tools, context and checks? A small piece of AI etiquette that makes the conversation useful.
Amy helps organise my life. She is an AI PA. Is letting her email people any different from using a human assistant, and what manners should apply when our agents start talking to one another?
A new inbox label for a familiar irritation: AI wrote the reply, but did the sender read it? What mobile-phone etiquette can teach us about judgement, shared attention and the manners of AI.
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