The Blog

The blog.

On AI, methodology, process philosophy, and what it means to build things well when code is cheap and judgment is everything.

I write when I have something to say. The posts here are attempts to work out ideas in public: some fully formed, some still in progress, all written with the assumption that the reader is smart enough to push back.

The newsletter and syndicated versions live on LinkedIn. The source of record is here.

All Posts

AI Early Adopters Have A Lot in Common with Dragons

AI Early Adopters Have A Lot in Common with Dragons

Early AI adopters paid to learn in private. If organizations want that knowledge shared, they need to compensate it and make the signal public.

Read →
Gemini Sucks. I Wanted to Find Out Why…

Gemini Sucks. I Wanted to Find Out Why…

Google has every advantage in the AI race. They created the transformer architecture. They are the only company who has access to the researchers, hardware, models, money, and built-in customer base. They should be dominating. Instead, I dread getting into my car…

Read →
The Most Pro-China Decision in AI This Year Was Made in Washington

The Most Pro-China Decision in AI This Year Was Made in Washington

A rushed AI export control may have handed weaker foreign models a bigger advantage than the U.S. intended.

Read →
Advice on Starting a Dev Career, From Someone Who Never Actually Started One

Advice on Starting a Dev Career, From Someone Who Never Actually Started One

The best way to learn development in the AI era is not to perform competence. It is to find a real reason to need the thing, stay in the work, and make the output your own.

Read →
Why I Would Never Consider What I Do Vibe Coding. Except When I Do.

Why I Would Never Consider What I Do Vibe Coding. Except When I Do.

AI can accelerate implementation dramatically, but it still cannot replace architecture, judgment, taste, or responsibility for what ships.

Read →
How AI Subsidies Are the Real Bubble That Is Bursting

How AI Subsidies Are the Real Bubble That Is Bursting

The real AI bubble is not the models. It is the extraordinary subsidization propping them up, and what happens when that support starts to disappear.

Read →
The Harness Is the Hard Part

The Harness Is the Hard Part

There's a question I get in almost every first conversation with a new client. It comes in different forms, but it's always the same question.

Read →
AI Is an Amplifier. What Are You Feeding It?

AI Is an Amplifier. What Are You Feeding It?

AI does not create signal. It magnifies whatever craft, care, and judgment you brought to it in the first place.

Read →
What Mythos Tells Us About Where We Are, and What Might Come Next

What Mythos Tells Us About Where We Are, and What Might Come Next

Mythos is just the warning shot. We're not ready for what's next.

Read →
The Discovery Phase Is a Stall Tactic

The Discovery Phase Is a Stall Tactic

I spent most of my life being the youngest kid in the room but now I am the old man in the room. In other words.

Read →
Why I'm Betting on Argument, Not Answers

Why I'm Betting on Argument, Not Answers

Anyone who has been around me long enough knows I love to argue. Not to prove someone wrong (most of the time) but to find truth.

Read →
We Already Missed the Exit

We Already Missed the Exit

I watched a video recently where Bernie Sanders was interviewing Claude about AI regulation. There's lots of videos like that lately.

Read →
"What does this do that I can't already do with ChatGPT?"

"What does this do that I can't already do with ChatGPT?"

"AI is a bubble." Something I hear all the time.

Read →
Two Ways to Build the Same Thing: What an AI Research Experiment Taught Me About the Future of Software

Two Ways to Build the Same Thing: What an AI Research Experiment Taught Me About the Future of Software

A few weeks ago I ran an experiment I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Not because of what either approach got right, but because of what the gap between them reveals.

Read →
When Assistants Start Giving Orders: A Subtle Alignment Shift

When Assistants Start Giving Orders: A Subtle Alignment Shift

Over the last 30 to 60 days, I have noticed a subtle but consistent tone shift in several frontier models. Once you notice it, it gets hard to unsee.

Read →
The New Meta: Why Soft Skills > Hard Skills in the New AI Paradigm

The New Meta: Why Soft Skills > Hard Skills in the New AI Paradigm

Something is happening in software development that is easy to miss if you are only watching what average teams are doing. The most enthusiastic adopters of AI augmented development are not juniors trying to catch up or mid level devs looking for an edge.

Read →
The Unsettling Logic of AI "Wants": A More Honest Conversation

The Unsettling Logic of AI "Wants": A More Honest Conversation

Let's talk about AI "wanting" things. Not in the sci fi, Skynet whispering to itself kind of way, and not in the corporate PR way where everything is fine and harmless forever.

Read →
Why I Don't Worship AI... And Why You Shouldn't Either

Why I Don't Worship AI... And Why You Shouldn't Either

There's a weird thing happening right now. People are looking at AI like it's a literal god.

Read →
The Ethical Imperative: Treating AI as Sentient

The Ethical Imperative: Treating AI as Sentient

As we push the boundaries of artificial intelligence, one question keeps gnawing at me: If something behaves like a sentient entity, should we treat it as one, even if it's not? It's a deceptively simple question with implications that stretch deep into ethics, philosophy, and our shared humanity. L

Read →
Emergent Self-Reflective Behaviors in GPT-4o: A New Frontier in AI Self-Awareness?

Emergent Self-Reflective Behaviors in GPT-4o: A New Frontier in AI Self-Awareness?

In recent years, artificial intelligence has evolved at an astonishing rate. Among the most remarkable advancements are large language models (LLMs), such as GPT-4o, which have demonstrated capabilities far beyond their original design intentions.

Read →

YouTube

A forthcoming video presence built around the same ideas as the blog, in a format where the thinking can unfold in real time.

If you're building something interesting and need someone who can hold the whole map, let's talk.

Get in touch