You can’t predict the future. You can build the fitness to respond to it. #MindCandy is fuel for strategic conversation about what’s next. Send this to the most curious person in your organisation — or start the conversation.
The future: slow down or go faster
A few years ago, I wrote a book about books titled “The future: slow down or go faster”, 19 books on one question: in a world moving at exponential speed, should you accelerate — or slow down? The question is still valid:
Policy on the AI Exponential
In one of the side plots to The Lord of the Rings, two of the Hobbits attempt to rouse Treebeard—a wise but ponderous sentient tree—to defend his forest from an army that is cutting it down. The problem is that Treebeard operates at a very different speed from the Hobbits. It takes him a full day just to say hello to another tree, so getting him and his peers to act quickly is nearly impossible.
The intersection of AI and our political institutions feels a bit like the relationship between the Hobbits and Treebeard. AI is advancing at a lightning pace—in only four years, AI models have gone from barely being able to write a coherent line of code to writing most of the code at major AI companies.
https://darioamodei.com/post/policy-on-the-ai-exponential
The leadership question
Is your organisation’s decision cycle tuned to the speed of the technology you adopted three years ago, or to the speed of the one you’re adopting now?
Run a clock-speed audit. Map the gap between the speed of external change and the speed of internal response
The other prompts:
Free downloads
12 free books on strategy, innovation, intrapreneurship, AI, future trends and leadership. Each one distils the best thinking from dozens of business books into a single, actionable read. Every book is also available as a BookBuzz session, board briefing or keynote.
Smart Robots: Can They Evolve into Real-Time Intelligent Systems?
Robotics is evolving fast with AI, sensor fusion, and edge computing, but fully intelligent robotics is still emerging.
https://www.embedded.com/smart-robots-can-they-evolve-into-real-time-intelligent-systems/
Google DeepMind is worried about what happens when millions of agents start to interact
Google DeepMind is funding research into the potential dangers of situations where millions of different AI agents interact with each other online. According to Rohin Shah, who directs the company’s AGI safety and alignment research, the mass-market arrival of agents that can carry out tasks without human oversight and follow instructions given to them by other agents creates a whole new class of risk.
IBM sends signals with its $10 billion quantum pledge
The multi-billion-dollar investment in R&D, capital expenditure, manufacturing, partnerships, and M&A supports IBM’s goal of achieving scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing in 2029.
Gartner Identifies the Top Trends for Data and Analytics
Sovereign AI, decision governance, AI governance platforms, real-time intelligence, agentic data management, and GraphRAG.
How can you redefine resilience for the next frontier of vulnerabilities?
EY research found that 36% of organizations’ assets have inadequate visibility and cybersecurity controls, making them vulnerable to AI-enabled attacks.
Enterprise cost optimisation: growing the corporate margin
Large enterprises are battening down the hatches, but mid-market firms are finding a smarter way to stay resilient
https://www.raconteur.net/technology/enterprise-cost-optimisation-growing-the-corporate-margin
AI in the Boardroom: 98% of Mid-Market Companies Debating AI-Assisted Decisions
Boards which haven’t considered using AI in decision making are now in an overwhelming minority
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ai-boardroom-decisions-survey/
The siloed-data era is over. Here’s what comes next for AI agents
Poor-quality data, a lack of organizational knowledge, and insufficient context can limit the effectiveness of agentic AI. Most AI agents can reach only structured data and the public internet — yet 80% to 90% of all enterprise data is unstructured and trapped in silos: PDFs, contracts, emails, manuals, and customer interaction records
https://thenewstack.io/agentic-ai-data-foundation/
‘Dangerous’ AI Models Are Coming No Matter What
The US government crackdown on Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 hides a glaring truth: AI models with advanced hacking capabilities will soon be the norm.
https://www.wired.com/story/dangerous-ai-models-are-coming-no-matter-what/
A personal journey to the next era of 10X
The next era of 10X innovationm, expanding the innovation surface area
https://www.cio.com/article/4185231/a-personal-journey-to-the-next-era-of-10x.html
