Techno-Politics and Tech Culture

About half of our clients have created CAIO roles for their leadership teams, the other half have good arguments against doing so. Do you need a CAIO? Here are some pros and cons and a few thought starters to help you decide. Continue Reading →

What would it take to build your company's first synthetic employee? What AI models could you use? How much data will it require? What about compute power? Electricity? Technical resources? Security? Legal? Risk? Ethics? Is the idea simply too crazy to think about now? Should you just wait until someone invents artificial general intelligence (AGI)? Continue Reading →

There have been quite a few pundits, futurists, and normal people weighing in on how AI might end the world. Skynet is a popular villain. Ultron if you're younger, HAL9000 if you're of a certain age. The plot is always the same: AI goes bad and attempts to destroy the world until an unlikely human hero saves us. It makes for a good story, but the real threat posed by AI isn't that obvious, nor is it anywhere near as engaging – which is why it is extremely dangerous. Continue Reading →

The excitement around AI, and its ability to impact almost every function across the enterprise, is forcing a lot of CEOs to consider revising their corporate governance structures. As you can imagine, the org charts vary dramatically ranging from centralized hierarchical oversight to decentralized distributed innovation. The emergence of the Chief AI Officer (CAIO), AI task forces, divisional ownership by business unit leaders, and SVP-level committees are all common approaches. Here's what we've been seeing. Continue Reading →

Walking along the railroad tracks up to the main building at Birkenau was chilling. I was about to enter the largest of the 40 Nazi extermination camps and sub-camps that made up the Auschwitz complex, and its reputation preceded it. Continue Reading →

You know who really hates AI? The middle management mafia. When you teach a member of your corporate deep state to do a job in 30 minutes that used to take three hours, you know what they want to do at minute 31? Grab a coffee. When you ask them what they did with the 2.5 hours of time that AI created for the company, the stock answer will be something like, "Well… you know that generative AI hallucinates. We were checking the output for accuracy." So much for the ROI on your $30-per-seat investment in Copilot. But there is hope for the "this meeting should have been an email" crowd. Let's explore. Continue Reading →

CES 2024 was like stepping into a sci-fi movie. Only the popcorn was real, and the special effects were available for pre-order. I walked all 2 million square feet of exhibit space (several times) using one essential filter: “Technology is meaningless unless it changes the way we behave.” While it’s true that AI was the overarching theme of this year’s show – that’s like saying integrated circuits, or data, or electricity were the theme of the show. AI is table stakes now. It’s incorporated everywhere it’s needed (like all of the other enabling technologies), so there’s no need to call it out. That said, there were a few standouts in Las Vegas last week. Here’s a short list of my favorites. Continue Reading →

Technology is meaningless unless it changes the way we behave. So far, I’ve found some super interesting new tech that I will write about after the embargoes are lifted and CES is officially underway. Continue Reading →

Seems Google has been talking about killing 3rd-party cookies since dinosaurs roamed the internet. But starting January 4, Google is going to limit cross-site tracking by restricting third-party cookie access for about 1% of Chrome users globally. Continue Reading →

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen dozens of headlines like, “OpenAI may have discovered AI so powerful it could end humanity.” While such headlines are sensational, it's important to approach them with a balanced perspective. Humanity is as safe from AI today as it was yesterday. And, it is highly unlikely that (considering all of the other threats to human safety) AI is going to be humanity's undoing any time soon. Continue Reading →