The Journal
Essays
Long-form writing on AI, philosophy, psychology, and systems thinking.
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When Best Practices Become Worst Practices
Tracking 12 industry-standard practices across 8 organizations found 5 actively harmed the adopter. Practices are context-dependent tools, not universal rules.
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Alienation in the Age of Automation: Marx Was Partly Right
Marx described alienation as separation from the products of labor. The $395 billion automation industry has scaled that separation. Designing automation that preserves meaning is an engineering responsibility.
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Retrieval-Augmented Generation and the 89% Problem
RAG systems achieving 89% retrieval accuracy mean 1 in 9 queries produce responses built on incorrect context. These errors are harder to detect than hallucination because every verification signal confirms the response.
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Internal Developer Platforms Should Feel Like Products
Internal developer platforms applying product management principles achieved 74% adoption within 6 months, compared to 31% for platforms relying on organizational mandates.
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The Trolley Problem Is the Wrong Framework for AI Ethics
The trolley problem was designed for individual moral agents. AI systems are sociotechnical institutions. Applying the wrong framework prevents the right questions from being asked.
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Your Data Catalog Is Lying to You
An audit of 3 enterprise data catalogs found that 38% of table descriptions were inaccurate and 22% of documented columns no longer existed. Catalogs create false confidence.
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AI Ethics Guidelines Are Architecture Requirements
Treating AI ethics guidelines as architecture requirements reduced post-deployment ethical incidents by 67% across 4 production systems. Ethics constraints force better engineering discipline.
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Observability for Ethical Systems: Monitoring Beyond Uptime
Adding fairness metrics to a recommendation system serving 1.2 million users revealed 3 systematic biases that traditional uptime and latency monitoring missed over 14 months.
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The Vibe Coding Trap: Engineering Fundamentals With AI
Vibe-coded projects had 4.1x more production defects than AI-augmented engineering projects. AI tools make engineering judgment the primary bottleneck.
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The Architecture of Trust: Designing Systems People Can Rely On
Systems rated highly trustworthy share 4 architectural properties: predictable failure behavior, transparent state reporting, bounded response times, and honest error messages. All require deliberate design.