Month: April 2026
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The Brodie Helmet Problem
When the Brodie helmet, designed by John Leopold Brodie in 1915, was introduced to the British Army in the First World War it was intended to protect the soldiers from flying shrapnel. Until 1915 soldiers went into battle wearing soft cloth caps but
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Techniques for critical thinking in AI augmented strategy
The ever-greater need for critical thinking in the age of AI has been a consistent theme of mine in this Substack. Humans are so-called cognitive misers. It comes very naturally to us to make use of techniques that make things easier for
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How Data Won the Premier League
In 2015, Liverpool Football Club hired Jürgen Klopp as their new manager. It was a decision that was met with scepticism by many pundits. During Klopp’s last season at Borussia Dortmund the side had dropped to the bottom of the Bundesliga. But
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Are we having the wrong conversation on AI and jobs?
Given all the hype you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’re on the cusp of an AI-driven apocalypse in the jobs market. But are we? Last year Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, described what was called at the time a ‘white-collar bloodbath’. Up to
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When efficiency is not enough
I suspect that this point of view may be somewhat against the current zeitgeist towards AI-driven productivity, but I do believe that there is such a thing as too much efficiency. A good example of this happened in 2011 when the Tōhoku
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Designing your agentic AI system
There’s obviously a lot of talk about Agentic AI right now but the reality that I’ve experienced most in teams is that many of the agents that have been built so far are simple, task focused, sequential automations. There’s nothing wrong with