I’m an objectively poor manager. It’s not my skill set. I don’t have a ton of patience with people. I get frustrated easily when people don’t follow instructions. As a GenXer and the son of an Army captain, I grew up in a culture where management followed a strict command and control structure. So I…
Summary In today's episode, I examine whether today's AI can feel pain, possess consciousness, or convincingly imitate both. Here's what this means for you. You need to distinguish sophisticated language and behavior from actual inner experience as you evaluate increasingly agentic systems. You'll also learn these concepts: how current silicon-based systems mimic pain without possessing…
Summary In today's episode, I explain how generative AI can help solve cold cases and why massive evidence archives demand specialized retrieval systems and real-world detective expertise. Here's what this means for you. You can tackle complex investigations by combining targeted AI searches with indexed data, expert-designed questions, and lessons from skilled investigators instead of…
Summary In today's episode, I explain how small business founders can vet freelance AI developers and ensure their agents have maintainable architectures instead of brittle scripts. Here's what this means for you. You can evaluate vendors more confidently by demanding clear planning artifacts, plain-language explanations, and independent reviews. You'll also learn these concepts: how to…
Summary In today's episode, I walk through the latest developments in agentic AI assistants and break down the five levels of AI enablement along with the risks and opportunities they create. Here's what this means for you. You gain a practical framework for evaluating and safely deploying autonomous AI tools without sacrificing your data or…
Lexical? Semantic? Both! Two words that you should be thinking about as you use AI, in particular for larger projects where you have multiple documents, are lexical and semantic. These are the kinds of searches that AI, with the appropriate support tools, can use to dramatically reduce token usage AND generate better results. Lexical search…
I am now more convinced than ever that AI visibility softare is bullshit. Inspired by Lily Ray, I grabbed all my very long query data out of Google Search Console via the API and started looking at it to see what kinds of AI chats were getting passed along as queries in GSC. First, a…
A very long time ago, I was the Thought Police. I worked at a credit union data center, and I was one of the IT administrators. One of the rather unpleasant tasks I had was to monitor the Microsoft Exchange email server for sensitive data like account numbers, credit card numbers, OFAC data, etc. Microsoft…
