Practical AI skills for people whose job isn't AI. Most posts end with a drill, because reading about a skill isn't having one.
The pieces that hold up regardless of what shipped this week.
Four separate stories this year — a CEO's warning, a viral study, a blunt writing rule, a $50,000 gap in financial advice — all point at the same three seams. Here's the throughline, and the move that closes each one.
Simon Willison endorsed a rule blunt enough to actually follow: write it yourself, then use AI only to flag problems, never to supply the fix. Two studies published the same week explain why the line matters more than it sounds.
4 min read
McKinsey found 94% of companies still see no measurable AI return despite licenses everywhere. Four separate 2026 moves — a monetized free tier, outcome-based consulting fees, and a user base that's no longer mostly developers — show what actually separates the 6% that do.
5 min read
Three lab CEOs endorsed slowing model development the same week Anthropic's own numbers showed the real gains came from supervision, not a new release. Here's what to do with the model you already have.
4 min read
Six months of AI CEOs reversing, hedging, or flatly contradicting their own jobs and AGI predictions haven't changed what's worth building this week. Here's the one decision that stays the same no matter which number turns out right.
5 min read
Sam Altman says people who understand their industry but can't code are now positioned to build. Two other signals from the same week explain what that claim leaves out, and what to do about it.
5 min read
OpenAI's own researchers now run more agent-workdays than human ones. Watching a second and third agent isn't a bigger version of watching your first — it's a different problem, and most people are solving the wrong one.
5 min read
Meta's Muse agent, a DeepMind cheating study, and a RubyGems attack landed the same week. Three checks to run before you delegate anything to an agent.
5 min read
A resume screener, a workplace-monitoring rollout, a layoff algorithm, and an accent-modification tool all failed the same way this year. Here's the one check that would have caught each of them before a real person was affected.
4 min read
Users are reporting that ChatGPT's opt-out from training reverts to 'on' after app updates, with no notice. Here's what to check today, and why the toggle was never the whole story.
4 min read
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