Notes

My biggest takeaway from Gartner's D&A Summit wasn't actually about AI. The expectations for the engineer of the future will shift — not just in what we build, but in how we communicate it.

As foundational models get closer to our everyday life, their underlying training data creates an access schism by default. Foundational models learn a representation space whose structures are disproportionately shaped by English-language data.

Agentic AI was the #1 topic in every CIO/CDO/architect conversation I had at Symposium. The more vendors claim to be agentic, the harder it is to find the ones that actually are.

OpenAI researchers claimed GPT-5 had "solved" a batch of Erdos problems. Turns out… not quite. Retrieval ≠ Discovery. Finding an answer isn't the same as creating one.

Ran into this AI ethics and architecture scenario in the wild. Sometimes the non-sexy components — routing logic, user permissions, human fallback — are exactly what separate a usable AI from a useless one.

Real Madrid lost their midfield maestro, Toni Kroos. Engineering teams lose theirs too. I've watched entire careers, from practitioner to SVP, built on the shoulders of a single Kroos.

Let's talk recognition in engineering. I'm seeing it fade, and that worries me. A sincere shout-out takes ten minutes and can spark years of extra drive.

Candidates deliver polished buzzwords and ace the elevator pitch. Yet the moment I hand them a case study, the conversation stalls. Automation should speed up work, not replace thinking.

Energized after an action-packed week at Knowledge25. Below are some favorite — and not-so-favorite — moments. Almost every hand went up for "Who wants to turn on Now Assist?" but only a few for "Who's running it in production?"

When your GenAI model starts hallucinating and your client wants their money back, it's the folks who understand statistical theory that get you out of the hole. You cannot be an AI "leader" if you don't understand its foundation — Statistics.

Key insights from workshops with directors, VPs, and C-suite participants. Business leaders don't need another talk-to-docs demo. They're looking for automated workflows that scale without relying on IT.