Thinking for the human side of technology.
Essays and field notes on AI, education, automation and influence. Practical thinking for people shaping what comes next.
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What the recent New York meetings reveal about city leadership, public capability and the next generation of sister-city partnerships.
Cities are taking a stronger role in housing, climate action and migration. As international cooperation comes under pressure, could shared knowledge, stronger public capability and a renewed sister-city model help turn global commitments into better outcomes for communities?
4. AI Gives Everyone More Capability. It May Not Give Everyone More Agency.
AI may democratise capability without democratising agency. The same tools can produce very different outcomes depending on confidence, knowledge, networks, opportunity and power.
3. When Everyone Can Build Anything, Knowing What to Build Becomes Everything
Creation is becoming democratised, but when everyone can make more, creation itself becomes less scarce. The advantage shifts towards knowing what is worth making.
2. Universities Prepared Us to Find Work. What If the Future Is About Creating It?
AI is changing the relationship between a person and possibility. Universities may need to develop graduates who can recognise problems, initiate action and create opportunities — not simply find work.
1. AI Can Make Almost Anything. Can We Still Tell What Is Good?
When generation becomes cheap, selection becomes harder. Discernment may be the ability that determines whether abundant AI capability produces value or simply more noise.
After Intelligence: From Capability to Agency in the Age of AI
AI is making capability abundant. The question is no longer only what AI enables us to do, but what happens to us when extraordinary capability becomes available to almost everyone.
After Scarcity: Rethinking the University in the Age of AI
AI does not eliminate scarcity in higher education. It moves it somewhere else. Artificial intelligence is often discussed as though it creates a simple substitution. AI can write, therefore writing matters less. AI can explain, therefore knowledge matters less. AI...
4. The University in an Age of Abundant Intelligence – Purpose
After Scarcity: Rethinking the University in the Age of AI This article is part of a four-part Frontiering series exploring what happens to higher education when intelligence, explanation and content generation become abundant. Rather than asking simply how...
2. When Intelligence Becomes Abundant, Originality Becomes Scarce — Originality
After Scarcity: Rethinking the University in the Age of AI This article is part of a four-part Frontiering series exploring what happens to higher education when intelligence, explanation and content generation become abundant. Rather than asking simply how...
3. AI Can Give You the Answer. But Do You Know Enough to Know When It Is Wrong? – Judgement
After Scarcity: Rethinking the University in the Age of AI This article is part of a four-part Frontiering series exploring what happens to higher education when intelligence, explanation and content generation become abundant. Rather than asking simply how...
1. The University in an Age of Abundant Intelligence – Power
After Scarcity: Rethinking the University in the Age of AI This article is part of a four-part Frontiering series exploring what happens to higher education when intelligence, explanation and content generation become abundant. Rather than asking simply how...
The Most Important Skill in an AI World? Intent.
AI can execute almost anything. The scarce skill is knowing what should be done — and articulating a brief that preserves human purpose, judgement and responsibility.