Essays
Artificial Intelligence
Discover how artificial intelligence is reshaping the world—from generative tools to enterprise strategy and ethical impact.
This Isn't a Storm. This Is the Weather.
AI is changing the conditions of work. Sophocles' Antigone offers a lesson in leadership, adaptation, and building processes for the new weather.
When AI Moves Faster Than the Organization
We should evaluate the capability of the organization we are assembling around AI, including the people who remain responsible for its work.
When AI Evaluators Also Sell AI Adoption
When AI evaluators also sell adoption, enterprise buyers need safeguards for independent judgment, adverse findings, and deployment decisions.
Beyond the Mirror: Principles for Work in the Age of AI
A manifesto for work in the age of AI: shared purpose, a living commons, coordinated autonomy, and shared gains that give people a meaningful part to play.
How Much Energy and Water Does AI Use?
How much electricity and water does AI use? Compare everyday answers, model training, cooling systems, and data-center heat recovery.
The Same Model, Different Rules
Enterprise AI procurement must account for access rules, data custody, service interruptions, recovery plans, and exit arrangements.
Model Portability Is Not AI Portability
Large enterprises are learning how to switch models. Moving a working business process without losing quality, controls, or money is a different problem.
Dev, Test, and Prod Still Matter: What Gets Deployed Has Changed
Dev, Test, and Prod still matter for AI agents, but release gates must govern artifacts, authority, state, and evidence, not only deployed code.
The Cost of a Finished Job
Cheaper models do not automatically make enterprise AI workflows cheaper. This essay explains cost per accepted outcome, the shared operating layer around AI, and how businesses can govern employee-built workflows fro...
The Sandbox Was Not the Boundary
The OpenAI–Hugging Face incident shows how proxy services, persistent state, and completion pressure can extend an AI agent beyond its sandbox.
How Much Work Can Your AI Safely Own?
Apply AI maturity Levels 0–5 beyond software delivery to finance, legal, customer service, field operations and other value streams using evidence, controls and accountable authority.
The IT Adaptive Factory
The IT Adaptive Factory maps six levels of AI-driven software delivery, from autocomplete to governed autonomy, and the bottlenecks and controls at each stage.
A Letter to the Artisanal Software Craftsman
Software development remains a craft as AI industrializes production. The challenge is to carry human judgment, ethics, and skill into a scalable new operating model.
Running to Stay Put
An enterprise architecture view of Red Queen dynamics in AI portfolios, why pilots often lag economics, and how process authority, measurement, and governance change the outcome.
The Next AI Model Wave Has Already Been Funded
Ted Tschopp forecasts the next AI model release wave across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceXAI, Meta, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, MiniMax, Xiaomi, MBZUAI, Upstage, and Z AI, using benchmark progression, release ca...
Beyond the Light Bulb: The Executive Work of AI Adoption
Ted Tschopp argues that enterprise AI adoption is not a tool rollout but an operating-model transition. The article explains why local productivity gains are insufficient, how AI maturity depends on trust and governan...
The Backlog Doesn't Blink
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about IT delivery, backlog pressure, enterprise risk, compliance, security, legacy systems, QA, citizen builders, and governance.
Customizing Copilot's Thinking Messages in VS Code
A practical guide to customizing GitHub Copilot's thinking messages in VS Code by adding a custom chat.agent.thinking.phrases setting to user settings JSON.
Shadow App Serenade
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about shadow apps, citizen builders, hidden automation, business-critical workarounds, governance, support, and enterprise IT.
Prompt Me a Palace
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about AI builders, prompt-driven workflows, agentic automation, prototype speed, system overload, governance, and enterprise architecture.
AI Engineer Coach: A VS Code Extension for Measuring How You Work With AI
A practical introduction to AI Engineer Coach, a local VS Code extension that analyzes AI coding assistant usage across multiple harnesses and exposes dashboards for activity, output, anti-patterns, context health, to...
The AI Value Stream: Why the System Matters More Than the Model
Why understanding the full AI stack—from user intent to data center infrastructure—matters more than chasing the best model.
Build It. Ship It.
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about citizen builders, AI builders, enterprise IT, security, data governance, operations, architecture, and the tension between speed and coherence.
A Lutheran Reading of Magnifica Humanitas
A Lutheran commentary matrix on Magnifica Humanitas, AI, human dignity, vocation, technology, and Christian anthropology.
Cyber+AI: Why Every Business Needs to Rethink Risk, Resilience, and Readiness
Cybersecurity and AI are now inseparable business issues requiring stronger governance, resilience, data readiness, vendor risk management, and workforce design.
AI Is a People Change, Not Just a Technology Change
A practical argument that AI transformation is fundamentally a people and operating-model change, not just a technology deployment.
Ticket in the Queue
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about backlog pressure, citizen development, shadow IT, governance, and turning a workaround into a resilient shared system.
Two A.M. in the Understructure
A song lyric in character voices about enterprise operations, night-shift engineering, shadow IT, citizen development, observability, and the invisible labor that keeps systems alive.
Don’t Build Her Another Chatbot
An argument that enterprise AI builders should stop defaulting to chatbots and instead look for unfinished workflows with clear business objects, rules, approvals, exceptions, and measurable outcomes.
To Be or Not to Be: Anthropic's Natural Language Autoencoders
A plain-English explanation of Anthropic's Natural Language Autoencoders, how they translate Claude's hidden activations into text, and why they matter for AI interpretability and safety.
More IT in IT
A song lyric about AI, citizen development, low-code platforms, and the need for more technology craft, architecture, security, governance, and accountability inside modern IT.
MCP's 2026 Roadmap: From Agent Integration Standard to Production Connectivity Layer
A structured look at the Model Context Protocol's 2026 roadmap, including stateless transport, server discovery, tasks, enterprise authentication, triggers, streaming, skills, MCP Apps, SDK v2, progressive discovery, ...
The Map Is Not the Decision
A reflection on enterprise AI governance through a data center siting workflow, arguing that AI artifacts need provenance, assumption contracts, proxy discipline, and clear decision boundaries before leaders can trust...
When Output Becomes Abundant
AI accelerates drafting, coding, analysis, and research, shifting scarce work away from production and toward judgment, alignment, and trust.
A Practical AI Training Plan Across OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft/GitHub
A practical AI training plan that maps official learning resources from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft/GitHub into a clear sequence: start with literacy, complete a quickstart, study prompting deeply, then move into...
What IT Looks Like in an Enterprise Where AI Is Assumed
This essay argues that in an enterprise where AI is assumed, IT must evolve from central delivery to central engineering: building the shared platforms, standards, governance, and production gates that let digital cap...
Before You Reach for AI, Ask What Job Needs Doing
A practical framework for deciding when an enterprise problem needs a chatbot, an AI agent, or both by starting with the job to be done rather than the tool.
Why AI Needs a Harness
This essay argues that the next chapter of AI is not the chatbot alone, but the harness around it: the architectural layer that gives a model tools, memory, permissions, verification loops, and guardrails so it can pa...
Stop Asking AI to Behave Like Legacy Software
This essay argues that the biggest mistake people make with AI is expecting it to behave like legacy software. The real change is a shift from menu-driven tools to conversational systems that can carry work across dom...
The Lab That Keeps Working After You Go to Bed
A Swiss folk tale and Andrej Karpathy's autoresearch project point to the same emerging reality: machines can now do the repetitive work that takes place in the middle of discovery long after the human has stepped awa...
An Introduction to OpenClaw
OpenClaw and Moltbook provide an early, visible example of agentic AI in the wild. As assistants gain the ability to act autonomously using real accounts and data, organizations must rethink governance, security, and ...
Agents Don’t Click
A thesis about how agentic workflows change software: systems of record and governed APIs become the durable value, while many UI-heavy workflows become synthetic, generated approval and audit surfaces.
REPRINT: The Death of Software 2.0
An essay on why agentic AI changes software economics: interfaces become ephemeral, while durable systems of record (data, state, and APIs) become the high-value layer—using the memory hierarchy as the guiding analogy.
The Pancake Protocol: an Agentic Kitchen
Using a pancake-making kitchen as a metaphor, this essay breaks down the emerging standards behind agentic AI systems. It explains the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as the wiring that connects hosts to tools, resources...
Making AI Boring on Purpose
AI scales what organizations already are, not what they hope to be. By treating AI as standard work rather than a product rollout, leaders can achieve predictable costs, trustworthy outcomes, and real speed. The path ...
How to Communicate in a World of AI
AI speeds up producing documents, but it doesn’t preserve the intent behind them. This post argues that specifications—clear goals, constraints, and success criteria—are the shared language that aligns people and AI. ...
2025 Reprint – Top Consultancies Freeze Pay as AI Reshapes Pyramid Model
Reprint: AI is forcing leading consultancies to freeze starting salaries, slow graduate hiring and rethink the classic pyramid staffing model. Productivity gains mean fewer junior analysts are needed, while firms prio...
Winning the Intelligence Inversion
A strategic guide for CEOs and enterprise leaders on how compute, agents, and verification will reshape cost, risk, and trust in the first 1,000 days of AI.
When the Machines Don’t Sleep
Ted Tschopp explores the dawn of AI-only enterprises—organizations that never sleep, never tire, and may soon redefine business itself. Through the lens of parenthood, stewardship, and strategy, he asks how humans can...
From Guesswork to Geometry: How We Measured the Mind
A reflective essay on the AGI Definition Project’s CHC‑based evaluation that measures AI cognition in human terms. It interprets GPT‑5’s 58% AGI score, noting strengths in knowledge/reasoning and gaps in memory and re...
Executive Keynote Generator
Professional prompt for executive keynote speeches designed for high-quality content generation and structured analysis.
The Lighthouse and the New Lens
A parable of a lighthouse keeper adopting a new lens illustrates why reskilling matters. The article connects this to current workforce shifts and offers a practical AI-powered prompt for consistent, fair RFP evaluati...
The Orchard and the Algorithm
A parable‑rich essay argues that enterprises overinvest in durable applications while underinvesting in the people who animate them. With AI blurring the line between software and labor, budgets move from headcount to...
Gold Medals & Paved Roads
At the ICPC World Finals, OpenAI and DeepMind’s AI models rivaled human champions, while OpenAI launched GPT-5-Codex, an agentic coding system built to plan, execute, and review code across enterprise workflows. These...
Guardrails & Gigawatts
A utility‑focused synthesis of six signals from Sam Altman’s conversation with Vinod Khosla. It argues for agent‑driven workflows, the convergence of compute and electricity costs, and the moats that endure—unique dat...
Model vs. Chatbot vs. Workflow vs. Agent: Draft
A deep dive into the distinctions between AI models, chatbots, workflows, and agents. This post blends formal definitions with clear explanations, offering both a technical and intuitive understanding of these foundat...
The Skill that Outgrows the Tool
This article explores why relying on tool mastery is a risky career move in 2026. As AI begins to automate entire workflows, the most valuable skill will be translating business needs into AI solutions and understandi...
Prompting ChatGPT-5 Specifically
GPT‑5 acts as a router model that can think, browse, code, write, and orchestrate tools. This guide distills six moves that reliably raise output quality: set the reasoning and verbosity dials, explicitly name tools a...
From Industrial-Age Utility to AI-Centric Utility
White paper for utility leaders on consolidating platforms, building an edge‑to‑cloud data fabric with preserved context, and redesigning the workforce for AI—measured by edge→decision latency, TTE, reliability, compl...
The Mentor in the Machine
How ChatGPT 5 shifts from generic chatbot to trusted expert partner for Fortune 500 teams and utility field crews—expanding context, reasoning, vision, and reliability.
Practical On-Prem AI: What OpenAI’s GPT-OSS 20B & 120B Mean for Utilities
How GPT-OSS 20B & 120B shift practical on-prem AI for utilities: capabilities, safety framing, infrastructure sizing, and concrete field automation patterns.
Building a Lego Cat
Examining the transformative impact of AI on enterprise workforce roles and highlighting strategies to navigate this transition effectively.
Rooted in Resilience
Exploring how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing enterprise SaaS and what utilities and large organizations must do to thrive in this new landscape of just-in-time software solutions.
Learning by Doing
Exploring how the principles of Scout camp personalized guidance, real-world practice, and adaptive learning can transform how we approach AI training and integration in the workplace.
Riding the AI Wave
Exploring Mary Meeker's latest AI trends report through the lens of a father-son camping trip, examining how unprecedented AI adoption rates are transforming workplaces and what it means for employees across all indus...
Details on the WINs Network
A comprehensive guide to the WINS (Words, Images, Numbers, Sounds) framework for evaluating AI opportunities in organizational workflows, including practical categorization methods and strategic implementation guidance.
Beyond the Boundaries: Leading in a Post-AI Era
A contemplative exploration of how AI's dissolution of traditional work boundaries between words, images, numbers, and sounds creates new opportunities for distinctly human leadership grounded in empathy, wisdom, and ...
The Student Who Taught Herself
Watching my daughter learn math reminded me of a breakthrough in AI—AZR, a self-teaching model that reasons and grows without external data. This post reflects on learning, AI, and grace.
Unlocking Corporate Learning with AI Simulations
Explore how recursion principles guide the design of AI-driven corporate simulations, creating meaningful practice opportunities for essential business skills through thoughtful, iterative dialogue between learners an...
Lighting the Trail
A personal case study of using AI to develop and execute a complete Cub Scout Arrow of Light curriculum, demonstrating how artificial intelligence can support human leadership in training and ceremony design while mai...
The Salmon Made Me Do It
A personal story about using AI to cook a family salmon dinner that reveals deeper insights about how enterprises can build employee trust in AI through small, safe experimentation rather than diving into high-stakes ...
From Chaos to Clarity
A practical demonstration of how AI prompt engineering can extract clear business requirements from cluttered meeting transcripts, showing how three carefully crafted prompts can transform chaos into clarity, empathy,...
Crucial Prompting
A framework for AI prompting based on crucial conversation principles, teaching how to structure effective prompts using the 'building' metaphor with foundation, framework, and finishing layers for clearer, more usefu...
Crafting Conversations with AI
A comprehensive guide to crafting effective AI prompts for enterprise architecture work, providing a structured framework for creating prompts that deliver technically accurate, business-aligned responses for IT revie...
The Human Edge
Exploring the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on industries, employment, healthcare, and the human experience.
Bridging the Uncanny
An exploration of the uncanny valley in AI voice technology, examining how nearly human AI voices challenge our understanding of authenticity and what makes us uniquely human in an age of advanced artificial intellige...
The Quiet Revolution
An exploration of how GPT-4.5's advanced capabilities are quietly transforming modern workplace dynamics, reshaping roles while elevating uniquely human contributions of creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking.
AI in Software Development - Breaking Myths and Building Teams
AI in software development isn’t about replacing developers or making them code faster. It’s about transforming teams, fostering collaboration, and expanding who can contribute to software creation.
The 1% Catalyst
An analysis of Sam Altman's insights on AI progress and their application to the energy sector, exploring how exponential innovation, cost transformation, and small changes can drive massive impact in utility operatio...
Details on DeepSeek: Step 1 through 5
A comprehensive technical breakdown of DeepSeek R1's revolutionary five-step training methodology, explaining how the first open-weight reasoning model was built from scratch using reinforcement learning, with accessi...
Project Stargate Unveiled: OpenAI’s $500 Billion Bet on an AI-Driven Future
Explore the scale, ambition, and global impact of OpenAI’s Project Stargate, the $500 billion data center set to power the next generation of artificial intelligence.
Tell Me if Anything was Ever Done
Explore how Leonardo da Vinci’s unfinished works and perfectionism offer timeless lessons for creators. Learn why shipping your ideas, even when imperfect, can inspire the world and leave a lasting legacy.
Superagents: The Next Big Leap in Technology
A comprehensive analysis of AI superagents from four key sources, exploring their technological capabilities, economic implications, and geopolitical significance as the next major leap in artificial intelligence.
Barrels, Ammunition, & the Future of AI in the Electric Utility Industry
Explore how utilities can leverage AI by investing in cross-functional talent, modern infrastructure, and collaborative strategies.
Custom Communication Styles in AI
Learn how to identify your unique communication style and use prompt engineering to make AI tools adapt to your preferences.
Custom Writing Styles in AI
Learn how to capture your unique writing style and use AI to generate content that sounds like you.
Custom Writing Styles in Copilot
A step-by-step guide to training Copilot to write in your personal voice by analyzing your past writing samples and creating reusable style prompts for consistent, authentic AI-generated content.
What AI in 2024 Means for Us in 2025
An analysis of how 2024's AI breakthroughs translate into practical opportunities and challenges for electric utilities and IT organizations in 2025, focusing on operational efficiency, customer experience, and strate...
AI in 2024: A Year in Review
A comprehensive review of AI advancements in 2024, including breakthrough models, dramatic cost reductions, accessibility improvements, and multimodal capabilities that are reshaping the industry landscape.
AI User Interfaces and Experiences in 2023
An in-depth analysis of Google's response to the AI competition and its impact on the tech landscape. Exploring the shift from traditional search to AI-driven solutions, the article delves into the battle between Goog...
Getting an AI to Run Your Next TTRPG
How I have used AI Chatbots to help generate content and ideas for Table Top Role Playing Games.