Posts

Why I Developed Black Towns

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  In a 2021 New York Times essay , Tom Hanks wrote that despite his lifelong interest in American history, he did not learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre until much later in life. He argued that leaving such events out of our shared history is more than an educational failure—it is a missed opportunity to become a wiser, stronger nation with a fuller understanding of its past. I agree. Many Americans now know something about Greenwood, the prosperous Black community in Tulsa that was devastated by a white mob in 1921. But it is easy to assume that Greenwood—often called “Black Wall Street”—was unique. It was not. After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people established Black towns and settlements throughout the South and beyond. Starting with little more than their freedom, courage and determination, they acquired land, built homes, opened businesses, founded schools and churches, and created vibrant, self-sufficient communities. Consider Charles Clark, a man born into slavery wh...
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Why AI Needs So Much Memory and Computing Power

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  Why does AI need giant data centers, massive amounts of memory, and some of the most powerful computers ever built? In this simple-to-understand video, we go beyond the dating-app analogy from the How Transformers Work in AI video and explore the math that powers modern transformers.
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How Transformers Work in AI

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  In an earlier video , I described how AI works as "smart guesses".   But how does AI decide which word to guess next? In this simple-to-understand video, I explain the core idea behind transformers, the technology that powers ChatGPT and modern AI systems.  
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The AI Automation Trap: What Manufacturing Can Teach Us About Agents, Token Costs, and Layoffs

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  “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” — Roy Amara Roy Amara’s observation, often called Amara’s Law , perfectly captures the current moment in generative AI. We are almost certainly overestimating what AI can safely and economically do in the short term. At the same time, we may be underestimating how profoundly it will reshape work, software, organizations, and human productivity over the long term. That tension is important. The problem is not that AI is useless. Quite the opposite. Generative AI is already a remarkably useful assistant. It can help people write, summarize, brainstorm, research, code, analyze, and learn faster. Used well, it can expand what an individual is capable of doing. The problem is that we are confusing a powerful assistant with an autonomous worker. I created this simple explainer video where I describe generative AI as a “smart guesser.” That phrase is intenti...
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How AI Really Works

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  This video is my attempt to describe Generative AI in a way that's simple enough for anyone to understand so they know best how to use it.
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CEO Succession Planning Is Not an Event—It’s an Operating Discipline

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  This article was first published on LinkedIn .  CEO succession planning is one of the most consequential responsibilities of a board—yet too often, it’s treated as a reactive event. It shouldn’t be. Succession planning should be an ongoing discipline, not something that begins when a CEO signals their departure—or when a crisis forces action. The best organizations build it into their operating rhythm. A few principles I’ve been reflecting on: Internal candidates outperform external hires According to study by the Yale School of Management, insiders promoted to the CEO role consistently outperform outside hires. And yet, we often overvalue external candidates. We trust polished interviews over years of observed performance—despit...
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Rethinking the "Lunch Test"

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Photo by August de Richelieu This article was first published on LinkedIn Early in my career, I was invited to join an interview panel tasked with evaluating software developer candidates. Beyond assessing their technical skills, we were also asked to evaluate their "culture fit." The guidance we received was simple: apply the Lunch Test . Would you want to have lunch with this person even if you didn’t work together? At the time, this seemed like a reasonable measure. After all, I would only choose to have lunch with someone I liked, and liking a colleague felt important—especially for someone I would end up spending a lot of time working with in the trenches. Over time, however, I realized that the Lunch Test was deeply flawed. It was an easy way for bias—both conscious and unconscious—to seep into the hiring process. ...
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