Ground Truth

What I’m reading, watching and thinking about.

Ground truth is a surveying term. It’s the measurement you take on the actual ground to check whether what the satellite thinks it sees is real.

I read a lot. I save even more. What’s actually changing, why does it matter, and what should we do about it?

Sixteen things

Some are mine. Some are things I’m passing on. The label tells you which before you click.

My take We spend enormous time asking what artificial intelligence can do. The harder question is whether we can adapt fast enough to use it well. The technology adaptation gap
Artificial intelligence and workWhat changes, who it hits, and what it takes

If artificial intelligence changes work, education has to change too

If the shape of work is changing this quickly, the institutions that prepare people for it can’t stay still.

Financial Times Read it

Enough debate about the AI jobpocalypse. Plan for the messy middle.

Economist Molly Kinder on what workers can actually expect. Not abundance or apocalypse, but 15 to 18 million back office, customer service and clerical jobs, held mostly by women, and what we can do about it.

Center for Humane TechnologyWork Read it

Maturity isn’t about how much artificial intelligence you have

I’ve built these capabilities inside four very different global organizations. The technology is rarely the limiting factor.

Databricks Read it
My take Stop asking what an agent is. Ask what work it can own, and when it should stop and ask for help. On agentic systems See the Veritux example
My take

Alignment isn’t just a technical problem

Model alignment asks whether the system behaves as intended. Organizational alignment asks whether it serves the strategy. Human alignment asks whether any of it improves human outcomes.

Three kinds of alignment

Fortune 50 to family business

For years I ran very large transformation programs. I’ve also spent more than three decades operating CoffeeCakes.com. The scale changes. The principles don’t.

CoffeeCakes.com See what I’m doing
ColoradoWhere the applied future is being built

Colorado as a laboratory for the applied future

Research, aerospace, geospatial technology, energy and a culture that values the natural world.

University of Colorado CU AI Institute

What Colorado actually has going for it

The second part of Engage Colorado's innovation vision, setting out the state's strengths as an innovation ecosystem rather than assuming them.

Engage ColoradoColorado Read it

Elevation and friction on the Front Range

How Denver and Boulder became a global centre for location science, remote sensing and orbital intelligence. Ground truth is a remote sensing term, and this is where it’s practiced.

Project GeospatialColorado Read it

Research at the edge of what is possible

Engineering researchers at the University of Colorado, working on the fundamental questions that expand knowledge and improve the human condition.

CU EngineeringColorado See the research
Quantum and climateThe next two waves

New Mexico is buying itself a quantum industry

Three million dollars to the Quantum New Mexico Institute for talent, research infrastructure and commercialization, inside a state commitment that already runs past four hundred and fifty million.

Quantum Computing ReportQuantum Read it

An index for quantum adoption inside enterprises

From HorizonX and Resonance in London. A way to compare how far along an organization actually is, rather than how much of the technology it has bought.

The Quantum IndexQuantum Follow the index

Methane, rice fields and a million carbon credits

Google has agreed to buy a million credits from Mitti Labs through 2030, generated by keeping rice fields flooded for less time. Around half the methane and forty percent less irrigation water, with no drop in yield.

TechCrunchClimate Read it
My take I’m less interested in predicting the future than in watching for patterns.

Agents are moving out of the demo and into real work.

Signals I’m watching Read the signal

What I’m watching next

The technologies keep changing. The enduring questions are about what we choose to do with them.

  • 01How do we build better organizations?
  • 02How do we prepare people for work that doesn’t yet exist?
  • 03How do we protect the living systems we depend on?
  • 04How do we distinguish useful innovation from novelty?
  • 05How do we make sure increasingly powerful technologies produce real-world progress?

Those are the questions behind Ground Truth. I’ll keep sharing what I find worth reading, watching and thinking about.

Also on the record: Are Americans ready for voice banking, American Banker.