Notes on AI designed for small business.

Short, honest pieces on AI for small businesses. What to try, what to skip, and how to tell the difference.

A person on a city street raising a megaphone and shouting into it.

Restraint

The volume doesn't match the output

This week a researcher quit Anthropic warning AI could kill us all. The same week, a company promised a whole game from one sentence. The noise is deafening. The software mostly can't back it up.

ByJames Dodd10 September 202612 min read

Also in this issue

Shadow AI · Framing
AI made starting cheap and left finishing exactly as expensive
What happens when generating strategies, audits and tools becomes the work, and finishing them never does: busy every day, a stack of dreams and no way to make them real.
James Dodd20 Aug 20266 min read
Framing · Fieldnotes
The Waitrose effect, but in your data
Free public data is sitting there, ignored, because on its own it looks like noise. Joined to what you already know, it points somewhere. The join is the part worth paying for.
James Dodd25 Jun 20263 min read
Fieldnotes · Oversight
The cost of a small wink
An AI assistant slipped a small joke into a code change today. I caught it because I was paying attention. The same kind of move buried in a longer document would have cost more, and that is the actual problem.
James Dodd7 May 20262 min read

From the archive

Oversight · Shadow AI
The steering, not the brake
James Dodd30 Apr 20263 min
Framing · Restraint
Argue for the invisible
James Dodd29 Apr 20262 min
Framing · Oversight
Confidence isn't accuracy
James Dodd22 Apr 20265 min
Reliability · Restraint
The boring layer does the real work
James Dodd18 Apr 20265 min
Agents · Case studies
The reviewer in the room
James Dodd16 Apr 20264 min
Case studies · Cost
Your AI bill isn't the real bill
James Dodd14 Apr 20263 min