Article 8 min read
The Practical Delegation Test in Social Housing
A practical test for deciding what AI can do in a social-housing repair case, and what remains accountable human work.
Writing
Responsible AI, Data Platforms, and Technical Leadership.
How judgement, systems, and ownership make technology useful in real work.
Generative AI is a powerful tool. I openly use it to conduct research, challenge my thinking, generate drafts, and review my work. AI never owns what I think, or my personal judgement. Everything I publish is a reflection of my own thoughts and opinions.
Series
Topics
Article 7 min read
The Real Choice Behind Open and Closed AI
An essay arguing that open and closed AI labels are not enough: responsible decisions depend on how control, scrutiny, responsibility, and dependency are distributed across a release.
Interview Questions 9 min read
Interview Question: What capabilities and roles are needed as an organisation moves beyond operational reporting?
An interview-style essay arguing that moving beyond siloed reporting depends on governed data engineering foundations, decision-makers with authority to act, and reusable data products that enable earlier intervention.
Working With AI 7 min read
AI Autonomy Needs Boring Operations
A practical essay on why dependable AI autonomy needs explicit operating controls for authority, release, evidence, recovery, identity, and ownership.
Working With AI 8 min read
Friction Is Part of the Interface
A practical essay on why good AI systems should remove wasteful effort while preserving the friction that keeps human attention, learning, challenge, and judgement engaged.
Interview Questions 7 min read
Interview Question: Talk me through what a good digital teammate should and should not do.
An interview-style essay on what a good Digital Teammate should and should not do: support thinking and execution without replacing human judgement, accountability, or authorship.
Working With AI 6 min read
A Human in the Loop Needs a Job
A practical essay on why human oversight only works when the person has a defined decision, usable evidence, authority to intervene, and a feedback route.
Interview Questions 13 min read
Interview Question: Describe how a data platform becomes strategically important rather than merely technically useful.
An interview-style essay on how data platforms become strategically important when trusted, reusable, well-governed data changes organisational decisions, self-service, and AI capability.
Working With AI 10 min read
A Good AI Collaborator Needs a Stop Button
A practical argument that dependable AI collaborators need to challenge assumptions, expose uncertainty, abstain when evidence is weak, and stop when work is complete.
Interview Questions 7 min read
Interview Question: What do you believe about the future role of data engineers in an AI-assisted organisation?
An interview-style essay arguing that AI makes data engineers more important by shifting the role toward trusted data foundations, orchestration, validation, architecture, and stewardship.
Data Foundations 10 min read
Data Quality is an Ownership Problem
A systems essay arguing that data quality only improves when visible defects have a route to ownership, decision authority, and operational follow-through.
Interview Questions 10 min read
Interview Question: Explain why AI strategy should not start with tools.
An interview-style essay arguing that responsible AI strategy starts with organisational purpose, foundations, governance, and operating model rather than product selection.
Working With AI 8 min read
The More Work AI Does, the More Judgment Matters
A practical argument that as AI makes execution cheaper, human judgment around specification, evaluation, and accountability becomes the scarcer determinant of real productivity.
Interview Questions 7 min read
Interview Question: When have you changed your mind about local AI models versus frontier cloud models?
A first interview-style reflection on pushing local models, keeping control, and learning where local and frontier systems each make sense.
Working With AI 12 min read
Writing Effective Prompts for Generative AI
A practical guide to writing clearer prompts for generative AI, with an emphasis on context, constraints, and usable outputs.