AI & Emerging Technology
What Kind of Fires Does AI Start?
Alex Cannella applies familiar problem-solving methods to active AI incidents, smoldering problems, and conditions that could fuel future failures.
Purpose
Learn & Prepare
Leadership & Organizations
Learning to Lead While the Rules Are Changing
A military leadership experiment offers a way to think about uncertainty, information provenance, and learning to lead systems that contain AI.
AI & Emerging Technology
Before the Fire: How We Learn to Use AI Safely
Responsible AI use is a learning loop: anticipate what could go wrong, observe what happens, and use what you learn to improve the next decision.
AI & Emerging Technology
Can You Recover Your AI Work?
Backup copies are a starting point. Recovering AI work also means restoring the conversations, instructions, connections, and context that make a project usable.
AI & Emerging Technology
What Chatbot Tricks Can Teach Us About Working Together
Repeatable habits keep human judgment involved when working with GenAI: develop the substance, pause to review, then give it shape.
AI & Emerging Technology
No, Chatbots Will Not Be Controlling Air Travel
Distinguish AI traffic-planning support from chatbot control, and ask how aviation recommendations are checked and which decisions stay human.
Society, Policy & Culture
Same Behavior, Different Meaning
Visible behavior can carry different cultural meanings. What goes unrecorded creates blind spots for language models and for us.
AI & Emerging Technology
Can I Trust an LLM With Business Math?
How to trust AI-assisted business analytics by defining the metric, inspecting the calculation, and following the number back to its source.
AI & Emerging Technology
Behavior Patterns for Creating with GenAI
Shared Conceptual Vocabulary for Working with AI
AI & Emerging Technology
What Did You Stop Wondering About?
An invitation to revisit an old curiosity and see where a conversation with generative AI might lead.
AI & Emerging Technology
The First Tool That Can Speak Before It Knows Why
Generative AI can produce fluent language before purpose, audience, and evidence are fully formed. That changes the thinking loops we need.
AI & Emerging Technology
Why Giving AI More Context Works
Relevant context helps define an AI task through useful constraints, which makes a fitting answer more likely.
AI & Emerging Technology
Brainstorming with AI While Keeping Our Feet on the Ground
A grounded reflection on brainstorming with AI, chasing creative rabbit holes, and keeping human judgment in charge.
AI & Emerging Technology
Before You Hand Someone a Hammer
A short PSA about choosing the right tool for the job, and teaching Generative AI through guided, low-stakes practice.
AI & Emerging Technology
The Invitation
A reflection on generative AI as an invitation for broader participation, patient teaching, and community learning.
AI & Emerging Technology
The Race Condition with Reality
A systems-thinking article explaining why AI adoption feels chaotic when capability, understanding, governance, resilience, human adaptation, and scale all move at different speeds.
AI & Emerging Technology
Second Brains, Post Offices, and the Problem of Finding Things
A plain-language explanation of why AI-powered second brains depend on maps, indexes, and human validation to find the right information.
Systems Thinking
Resilience Debt
A reflection on how convenience, efficiency, and automation can quietly remove the alternate paths an organization needs during disruption.
AI & Emerging Technology
Where Second Brains Break
A practical article on stress-testing AI-powered second brains for retrieval, source authority, calibration, and safe operating boundaries.
AI & Emerging Technology
Where Is the Panic Button?
A practical reflection on why every GenAI user should know how to stop an agent before handing it work.
AI & Emerging Technology
Asking for a Query vs. Asking for Help Designing a Query
Before asking for the implementation, collaborate on the design.
AI & Emerging Technology
Building a Better Human-Bot Collaboration Environment in Obsidian
What it took to turn scattered notes, an AI agent, and a shifting workspace into a collaboration that actually got better over time.
AI & Emerging Technology
AI Reaches Far Beyond Its Users
Like many technologies before it, AI is spreading into more and more of the systems that shape modern life. History reminds us that technologies often become deeply embedded in society long before we fully understand their long-term consequences.
AI & Emerging Technology
How LLMs Answer Questions They Were Never Taught
A useful answer is not proof that a chatbot knows, remembers, or has checked the answer.
AI & Emerging Technology
Learning From the Illusion of Knowing
A convincing response can still be a useful object of investigation.
AI & Emerging Technology
From Zero to Hero in Prompting
A practical guide to clearer AI prompts through specific instructions, useful structure, roles, and iterative refinement.
Data & Software
Data Mart Hygiene First Principles
You can catch contradictions without knowing the whole story.
AI & Emerging Technology
A Shadow Is Enough
How Society Might Emerge from Noise
Data & Software
Just Parse It Later
The Dirty Secret of Free Text Overloading
AI & Emerging Technology
Choosing the Right AI Assistant
A practical guide to choosing an AI assistant for the work, comparing model strengths, integrations, and the cost of switching mid-project.
Learning & Knowledge
Estimating the Speed of Light with Chocolate
Estimate the speed of light with a microwave, a ruler, and a chocolate bar.