A few years back, when ChatGPT was in its infancy, stories relating to AI hallucination-induced mishaps made the news on pretty much a daily basis. From lawyers filing briefs referencing non-existent cases to government reports riddled with fake citations, you could watch people learning the limitations of AI in real time. And no organisation was too big to avoid embarrassment. Although these incidents do still occur, people are now at least starting to become aware of the very real...
5 days ago • 1 min read
Each week, it seems like there’s yet another announcement of technical workers losing their jobs to AI. In Australia, for example, tech giant Atlassian recently laid off 1,600 workers - 10% of their global workforce - “to steer more spending into AI”. Now, granted, not every AI-related job loss is necessarily as it first appears. Some experts point to AI-washing. That is, companies using AI as cover for restructuring decisions they would have made anyway. But regardless of the reason, the...
9 days ago • 1 min read
Have you ever seen the TV show Nip/Tuck? It centres on the lives and clients of two Miami plastic surgeons. But what it’s really about is the quest for perfection. The main characters want perfection in their own lives, but all they are actually capable of creating is the illusion of it. And beneath the perfect facades, all the characters are actually pretty terrible. It’s now over 20 years old, but rewatching an episode the other day made me realise it serves as a perfect metaphor for AI. AI...
12 days ago • 1 min read
Every organisation wants to be AI-first. It’s the new “data-driven” - a badge that signals ambition, modernity, and a seat at the table of the future. “In the long run, we’re evolving in computing from a ‘mobile-first’ to an ‘AI-first’ world.” - Sundar Pichai, Google “We are no longer a graphics card company… We are an AI-first company. From now on, we are betting the company on AI.” - Jensen Huang, NVIDIA “Duolingo is going to be AI-first.” - Luis von Ahn, Duolingo “Before asking for more...
16 days ago • 1 min read
In a recent blog post, CFO advisor and friend of the list Lauren Pearl discussed the impact of AI on the age-old software “build vs buy” decision. In short, Lauren argued that AI-driven vibe coding has made building software in-house far more appealing when the stakes are low, but when stakes are high, buying is still the way to go. To quote Lauren: “When you buy software, you don’t just buy the code. You buy a support team, expert-derived flows, tested features, platform trust, regular...
19 days ago • 1 min read
Ten years ago, everyone wanted to be doing machine learning. Go to a data conference - someone was presenting on ML. Advertising a data role - just mention ML and applications would 10X. It was the promise of machine learning that inspired an entire generation of data scientists. I know. I was one of them. And then came the statistic that revealed what many data scientists knew but few wanted to admit: around 90% of ML initiatives never made it to deployment. The ideas were there. The...
23 days ago • 1 min read
Last week, I stepped on the fancy scales at my gym for the first time in four months. You know the ones. They don’t just tell you your weight. They tell you your muscle mass, bone density, basal metabolic rate… Basically, everything short of your star sign. The results were horrifying. Everything had gone backwards. I’d even managed to lose 400 grams of muscle. I’d been training five days a week and made no major changes to my diet. I was lifting heavier weights than ever before. None of it...
26 days ago • 1 min read
AI can get anyone to 60% of a finished output in minutes. A novice with the right prompt can produce something that looks polished, credible and complete. And to anyone who doesn’t know what “finished” actually looks like, it might even pass for the real thing. But getting from 60% to 100% - the part where real insight lives - is a different problem entirely. In a recent Forbes article, Brent Dykes mapped out exactly what happens in that gap with his Four Zones of AI Productivity framework....
30 days ago • 1 min read
Back in the day, while doing my PhD, I listened to podcasts pretty much nonstop. It helped break the monotony caused by hours of data analysis. Over time, the hosts of those podcasts took on god-like status in my mind. One that particularly stood out to me was Pilar Alessandra’s “On the Page”, a podcast that began with a theme song so catchy I still find myself humming it to this day. I wanted to be just like her, but never thought it possible. For starters, I didn’t even know who to turn to...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read