Writing archive
Older essays on agentic systems, governance, operations, incentives, and the work of making AI useful in real organisations.
Search articles · Choose a reading route
If agents can build the implementation, the durable asset may be your company's rules, data and responsibilities. What this means for software, business costs and the people who understand how work gets done.
Gallup's country comparisons tell a more interesting story than optimists versus pessimists. Using AI, expecting it to help and trusting its answers are three different things.
If AI agents remove the hassle of buying elsewhere, Amazon has to compete on more than convenience. Product trust, delivery and whose agent we use become the real questions.
For complicated work, the useful shift is from handing an agent a task and walking away to staying close enough to see the structure, check the evidence and steer together.
AI can help us prepare, remember and follow up. The relationship still depends on listening, making useful connections and doing what we said we would do.
Before AI, who put a number on humanity's chances? Nuclear war, pandemics, climate and the algae story, with the outcomes and assumptions restored.
I still love my Mac. But after setting up two Beelink Linux machines for agentic work, I am no longer buying one for every software worker.
The Chief Agentic Officer Briefing was meant to run on Orchistra. After almost four weeks of deployment attempts, I stopped the all-in-one operating-system build and returned to messaging, integrated tasks and work packets.
When I joined CEO CF, I was under pressure and short of headspace. Making time to go gave me somewhere to think through the problems I was carrying.
Parallel agents can save time, but human attention still needs room. A researched, practical guide to smaller waves, clear checkpoints and finishing work you can trust.
A meat proxy forwards AI-generated work without reading it. A funny name, a serious habit, and four questions before you press Send.
A practical British guide to apprenticeships, funded training, pay and employers in electrical work, cooling, construction and energy infrastructure. Learn a trade first, then specialise.
Already skilled in carpentry, HVAC, electrical work or plumbing? Keep your trade, use AI to find better-fitting work, and compare the whole offer before you move.
We talk about IQ and EQ. What about our ability to work with agents? Seven abilities to practise, a fair way to observe them, and why a new score would need much better evidence.
AI could help Britain deliver more care, better services and cheaper goods. But saving time, growing the economy and making households richer are different things.
We work to pay for life. But a salary, a sense of purpose and a good life are different things. Could AI help us separate them?
Pricing Watch 3: Astra arrives, Sol gets cheaper, and 26 AI model entries are compared with current API prices, GBP costs and careful August-to-September line charts.
Public intelligence will make competent work abundant. Private judgement, trusted relationships and accountable behaviour will remain scarce.
AI productivity can support more jobs when competition turns lower costs into better prices, higher demand and new work, but the outcome is not automatic.
AI can automate parts of organisational coordination, but companies must redesign management roles and incentives before the real productivity arrives.
Why a confidential peer room can give a portfolio CEO something valuable precisely because the investor is not in it.
Why a continuing peer group can help a CEO speak plainly, think better and return to what happened next.
How OpenAI turned a messy GPT-6 Astra rollout into a useful lesson in product recovery.
Why I think investors should value the balcony time, fresh perspective and renewed energy their CEOs can bring back from CEO CF.
Privacy choice
Cookieless Matomo analytics help me understand which public pages are useful. They are on by default unless you turn them off, and your choice never affects access to the site.