ICYMI 2026-07-11: No Shortcuts
Our weekly roundup of signals from the AI noise, for humans leading change.
State Farm’s Controversial AI Makeover
Customers will accept technology when it works better than what came before. (E.g., ATMs) They’ll reject it when it’s worse — and State Farm doesn’t seem to have structured the information powering their AI solutions with customer needs in mind. (WSJ gift link)
A Script for Mark Zuckerberg
What will Mark Zuckerberg say in Meta’s next earnings call? Ben Thompson has suggestions. This isn’t just satire: the post spells out the connection between capex and strategic vision more clearly than Meta itself has. Can your board do the same?
The Control Layer
A pitch for Otari, Mozilla’s open source LLM control layer. It makes a point I’ve reiterated over the last few months: we’re past the initial point of experimentation with AI. Production requires infrastructure architected to deliver value.
After Forty Years, Still No Silver Bullet
In 1986, Fred Brooks argued there are no tech shortcuts to making software that’s radically easier, simpler, or more reliable. Many people think AI is the ultimate silver bullet. They’re wrong.
Kinetic Coffee Panel
The Kinetic Council invited me to join a panel with Abby Covert, Jessica Talisman, and Larry Swanson about the evolving role of information architecture. My position: practitioners focused for far too long on how to make information easier to find and use at the expense of what to do about it and why that matters. But AI forces organizations to think more strategically about how information is structured.