Words
Your Next Customer Isn't Human
45% of shoppers already use AI in their buying journey. Google, OpenAI, and Stripe are building the rails for machines to buy things. This changes what a product surface is, what a brand relationship means, and who you're actually designing for.
Mar 2026
AI Surfaces: A Field Report from CYLNDR Off-Site 2026
What I told a room of founders and operators at Neue House NYC about where AI actually is right now: three Kubrick archetypes, seven protocol layers, and one uncomfortable inversion.
Feb 2026
Me-Search, Re-Search, Pre-Search
Design thinking was already failing. AI accelerated the collapse. Here are three ways creative teams are responding.
Jan 2026
AI at Work: The 2025 Evidence
Seven major studies converge on the same finding: AI boosts productivity 15-30%, compresses the skill gap, and is already reshaping which jobs grow and which shrink. The research phase is over.
Dec 2025
The Eval Problem: How Do You Benchmark What Can't Be Scored?
AI benchmarks work when there's a right answer. But creativity, emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity, taste—the domains where AI is increasingly deployed—don't have right answers. We need new approaches.
Nov 2025
Build, Buy, Partner: How to Navigate GenAI Without Getting Stuck
As teams move quickly to deliver real GenAI experiences, tough decisions emerge around control, ownership, and velocity. Here's how to navigate when to build, when to partner, and how to move with intention.
Aug 2025
Inheriting the Weird: What AI Innovation Actually Demands
Building with AI today means navigating between quick experimentation and slow, deliberate engineering. Here's how to manage this tension and master the unique complexity of AI innovation.
Jun 2025
Ask Amina: Can a Synthetic Persona Speak for the Displaced?
At the UN workshop on AI agents, Amina—a digital Sudanese refugee—took the mic. But what did she actually say, and who really got to speak through her?
May 2025
Image-1 API: The Moment AI Design Grows Up
OpenAI’s gpt-image-1 turns image generation from novelty into a production-grade asset pipeline. Steer styles with simple --srefs and push from concept to critique—all in code.
Apr 2025
Beyond the Map: Creativity in the AI Workshop
Exploring how creative organizations can actively engage with generative AI, transforming their process into a dynamic 'Hatter's Workshop' of experimentation and adaptation.
Apr 2025
AI Engineering Conference: AI Leadership & The Path to Real-World Impact
Day one of the AI Engineering Conference explored the organizational and strategic shifts needed for AI to move beyond experimentation into production.
Mar 2025
Agency Interrupted: Navigating the Human Side of AI Transformation
Inside the uncertain middle-ground of creative work reshaped by AI—where teams grapple with shifting roles, uneasy questions, and real-time lessons.
Feb 2025
AI at a Crossroads: Safety, Ethics, and the Future of Governance
Key themes from the International Association for Safe & Ethical AI Conference (IASEAI25), where experts from academia, industry, and policy discussed AI safety, multi-agent dynamics, alignment challenges, and the urgent need for integrated, culturally aware governance.
Feb 2025
Synthetic Personas: Memory, Bias, and What's Missing
LLMs can simulate personalities, but most AI-generated personas are shallow—no memory, no cultural grounding, no consistency. Here's what would need to change.
Feb 2025
AI in Medicine: Notes from the Mount Sinai Workshop
A two-day workshop at Mount Sinai brought medical students and physician-scientists together to examine what AI can actually do in healthcare—and what questions we haven't answered yet.
Apr 2024
Introducing Agentcy: Multi-Agent Creative Collaboration
Agentcy is an experimental platform built on AutoGen that coordinates specialized AI agents for creative work. It's open source, and we're learning as we build.
Mar 2024