Now
Agents in public services. How to make them legible to the citizens they serve, and credible to the institutions whose voice they carry. I'm hands-on as well as advising — building small AI tools of my own, because the only way I know to think about the material is to work with it. The bet underneath everything is that public AI works only if people can see it clearly enough to argue with it.
Recent thinking
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I am sorry to announce...
Am I the only one who wants to make LLM's pay for their apologies?
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Swimming Against Hard Edges
How I work now just doesn't feel like moving water through pipes - but more like swimming in it. More chaotic but more efficient at the same time.
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When Is An Agent Not An Agent?
The definition of an agent really matters. It just so happens, we need two of them.
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The Compliance Loop
I turned all the ICO guidance into a Claude Code skill - so now all my engineering and data decisions are compliant by default.
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The Efficiency Trap
AI's promise feels more like a threat.
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AI Doesn't need to be intelligent - just not as stupid as I am.
Yesterday two of my agents told me, in sequence and without consulting each other, to stop working, close my laptop and put my phone down.
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30 years of disappointment. The AI Agent I met in 1997
How a disappointing demo in 1997 started a thirty-year quest to explore agents, data, and who technology actually serves.