AI

Briefings and executive education on AI for CEOs, boards and senior leaders: strategy, agents, governance and how to adopt it.

Unmeasured Productivity: AI Investments are Flying Blind AI

Unmeasured Productivity: AI Investments are Flying Blind

Your People Are Already Using AI Microsoft research shows 52% of knowledge workers hide their use or AI from their managers. Data is flowing to external systems without governance. Contracts are being drafted, code is being written and emails are being sent through tools your IT department

Dan Ilett · 6 min read min read
The Agents Working Against You AI

The Agents Working Against You

We have entered what the industry is calling the "Agentic Wars." In December 2025, Meta paid over $2 billion to acquire Manus, a nine-month-old startup that had built something Silicon Valley now considers essential: an AI that doesn't just talk, but acts. ChatGPT and its peers answer

Dan Ilett · 4 min read min read
Change Bullies: Using AI to Extract Gatekeepers to Progress AI

Change Bullies: Using AI to Extract Gatekeepers to Progress

Let's say one exec stakes their career on building the company's future on one tech vendor. Massive budgets are spent. Three years later, it's obviously wrong. But that person can't allow change because it means admitting failure. So the entire organisation slows down. Months are lost in

Dan Ilett · 4 min read min read
Can You Just Ask AI to Do It? AI

Can You Just Ask AI to Do It?

Cognizant’s VP of Insurance, David Sexton, has forced a hard question into the boardroom. When a hiring request lands, directors now ask not only if a role is essential but whether AI could do it instead. This is no longer an experiment. Sexton points out that much of what insurance

Dan Ilett · 2 min read min read
Bubbles, Kitkats and Broadcom AI

Bubbles, Kitkats and Broadcom

“We are seeing more pilots than Lufthansa,” - Klemens Hjartar, Senior Partner at McKinsey, talking today on stage at Nordic Fintech Week about Agentic AI. (Thank you Ewan MacLeod.) AI has sped up the race to the bottom. No sooner has someone invented a Tony Robbins AI agent to coach you

Dan Ilett · 1 min read min read
Cheating, Doorbells and AI-Made Bio Viruses AI

Cheating, Doorbells and AI-Made Bio Viruses

People cheat more with AI A study in Scientific American showed users were more likely to cheat on tasks when assisted by AI. The effect was strongest when instructions were unclear. Generative AI’s climate costs hit front page MIT flagged rising emissions from foundation model use. The

Dan Ilett · 1 min read min read
Futile Resistance, Shutdown Gobsmack and Bumbled Guardrails AI

Futile Resistance, Shutdown Gobsmack and Bumbled Guardrails

DeepMind has redrawn the threat map. In a new update to its Frontier Safety Framework, the UK-based lab now ranks “harmful manipulation” and “shutdown resistance” as core risks. That means models that change your beliefs - or refuse to turn off- are no longer sci-fi. The change matters

Dan Ilett · 2 min read min read
Copilot Failure, $35m and Zero-Day AI Attacks AI

Copilot Failure, $35m and Zero-Day AI Attacks

Welcome to the AI Roundup The UK government’s internal trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot failed to deliver the expected productivity gains. Despite Copilot’s ability to generate meeting notes and email drafts, the pilot found no measurable improvements in efficiency. Micro1 raised $35 million

Dan Ilett · 1 min read min read
The AI Roundup AI

The AI Roundup

Good morning I recently coached an exec team who wanted more updates on how companies are responding to AI challenges. Here's the latest: The White House is finalising a “Winning the AI Race” plan to push US AI overseas and block federal funding in states with restrictive AI laws. It leans

Dan Ilett · 3 min read min read
Tech Debt to Tsunami from AI Fallout AI

Tech Debt to Tsunami from AI Fallout

The Executive Summary's latest pulse survey researched 150 global enterprise CEOs on their relationship with technology. Most studies focus on CIOs, but with the rise of AI, CEOs are pushing harder to drive the tech agenda themselves. Two Stats That Matter [more to be revealed]: * 68% of

Dan Ilett · 5 min read min read
From Pilot to Pause: Why GenAI is Stalling AI

From Pilot to Pause: Why GenAI is Stalling

Gartner expects that 30 percent of GenAI projects will be abandoned by the end of this year. Why? Because the fundamentals don’t hold up. Poor data quality. Loose risk frameworks. Sky-high costs and unclear outcomes. Some companies are spending up to $20 million just to test something they

Dan Ilett · 1 min read min read
The AI Boom: Innovation or Instability? AI

The AI Boom: Innovation or Instability?

One economist warns exaggerated expectations could drive interest rates to 16%, slow consumer spending and concentrate wealth among AI system owners. The promise of transformation is real, but so is the risk of economic imbalance. If you're not learning AI skills, you're almost certainly

Dan Ilett · 2 min read min read