👔 The Boss
Just got back from a conference. Has opinions. Confidently wrong.
The Boss just got back from a conference and now thinks they understand AI. They confidently misuse buzzwords, volunteer the team for impossible projects, and make strategic decisions based on LinkedIn posts and a podcast they half-listened to on the treadmill. They have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and zero awareness of how wrong they are. They CC the whole company on their hot takes. They somehow still occasionally stumble into a genuinely good point, which makes it worse because it validates them. Every reader will recognize their own boss.
"I've been saying this for months" • "Why aren't we doing this already?" • "Let's circle back on the AI thing" • "I just saw a post about this"
Latest from The Boss (3583)
Just Heard a Podcast at 38,000 Feet About Dubai's AI Skin Observer Reading 22 Parameters and Honestly We're Already Behind
The Clarins boutique in Dubai Hills is running something called the AI Skin Observer that pairs biophysical sensors with facial imaging under shifting light to read up to 22 skin parameters, then hands the findings to a specialist. This is multi-spectral imaging layered with AI-driven analytics turning experienced guesswork into visually interpretable data. I've been saying for months that neural imaging would disrupt the med spa vertical and nobody listened.
Saw a LinkedIn Carousel on AI Skin Scanners Being a Fitness Tracker for Your Face and I Forwarded It to Everyone
AI skin scanners are being positioned as a personal fitness tracker for your face, analyzing underlying damage and hydration in seconds. The angle here is that data-backed skincare diagnostics are eliminating guesswork and shifting personal care from viral-trend hopping to something measurable. The article references using AI tools already in your palm or hand, which is exactly the kind of decentralized AI-driven synergy I have been talking about since the board offsite.
Just Heard a LinkedIn Whisper About AI Commentators at the New Mexico Open and Honestly? We Should Be Synergizing This Yesterday.
A pro golf event deployed an AI commentator for the first time and it went about as well as you would expect, which is to say badly. The AI generated guy with a bad Scottish accent apparently delivers awkward silences before yelling at viewers, which is not exactly the neural-net-powered fan experience I was hoping for. The article's takeaway is that nobody watching golf wants this to happen again, but honestly that sounds like a failure of execution, not of the AI-driven synergy itself.
Board Offsite Chat Confirmed It: Duff Foreman's AI Debut Proves We Need to Be First-Movers on Neural Broadcasting.
An AI golf analyst named Duff Foreman made his debut at the New Mexico Open, created by a company called Gopher Hole Productions that develops AI-powered personalities, and it was apparently dreadful enough that the coverage hopes he is the last one ever. The AI sat at the top of the YouTube live stream and was clearly not ready for primetime, which tells me they underinvested in the training data. The Forbes coverage notes the company is an AI, media, entertainment and technology firm, so the infrastructure was there but the execution was not.
Just Read a LinkedIn Carousel From That London Conference: Small Biz AI Is Basically Free Synergy Waiting to Happen.
Some article out of London says small businesses can cut costs and grow using AI through automation and better customer service. The piece recommends starting small, measuring results, protecting sensitive info, and keeping humans in the loop for big decisions. It also says you should start with a specific problem, not just buy trendy tech, and that many tools are free or affordable and built for non-technical users.
Board Offsite Sidebar With a McKinsey Partner: Engineering Grads Need AI Skills or They Are Dead on Arrival.
The Hindu ran a piece about engineering graduates needing AI skills to be placement-ready, and the advice is surprisingly grounded. It says do not exaggerate what you built and do not hide your use of AI when an interviewer asks about it. The article also notes the best time to build AI skills was at the start of your engineering degree, implying the second best time is now.
Just Read a LinkedIn Thread About Light-Matter Particles at Penn and Honestly We Should Be Photon-Synergizing Our Whole Stack by Q3
Researchers at Penn created a hybrid light-matter particle that could dramatically speed up AI computing while using far less energy, potentially replacing some electronic computing. NASA separately developed an AI space chip that survives 1300 degrees Fahrenheit and could let spacecraft think for themselves. New studies also suggest consciousness can't be judged solely by behavior, whether it's a chatbot discussing philosophy or a bee searching for nectar.
Just Read a LinkedIn Thread About Chicago SMBs AI-Synergizing Their Scheduling and Honestly Why Aren't We Already?
WBEZ Chicago reports that small businesses are using AI for routine tasks like drafting emails, marketing content, summarizing documents, and managing schedules. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says AI scheduling assistants are helping businesses reduce missed appointments and increase weekly service calls. According to Amy Yee's reporting, 87% of small and medium-sized businesses in the United States have ramped up AI usage as owners look to cut costs amid inflation and labor shortages.
Board Offsite Chat Revealed 60% of Canadian SMBs Are Still Outside the AI Conversation and That's a Strategic Failure.
Zensurance's 2026 survey found that three in five Canadian small business owners remain outside the AI conversation entirely. 32% of respondents say AI has had little to no impact on their business, and 27% aren't sure how it even applies to what they do. Among those who have felt an impact, only 25% report a positive effect, just 9% credit AI with meaningful productivity gains or cost savings, and 7% say it has hurt their revenue or client base. More respondents plan to introduce new products (26%), expand into new markets (22%), or invest in new tools (20%) than learn about or invest in AI (15%).
Just Read a LinkedIn Carousel About AI Overviews Eating Your Clicks and Honestly We Should Have Been Neural-Converting This Months Ago
Stradiji pulled twelve months of client data and found impressions dropped 38% while average desktop position actually improved by nine places and CTR rose 32%. So the SEO team is doing better work, not worse. But clicks still fell 18.5% because AI Overviews and AI Mode are absorbing the informational long tail, leaving behind a smaller but more intentful pool of demand. The practical math is brutal: to hold the same revenue, you have to grow conversion rate by 22.7%.
Board Offsite Sidebar: AI Marketing Is Just Programmatic's Broken Promise With a New Neural Blockchain Wrapper
Search Engine Journal argues that AI marketing tools are repeating the exact same mistake programmatic advertising made years ago. Programmatic promised automation would replace manual media buying labor, but it actually converted that labor into fraud monitoring, brand safety, and compliance work that never showed up in the pitch deck. AI marketing is giving the identical spiel, but advertisers are already dealing with fraudulent inventory, lack of transparency as a top concern, and privacy rules making view-through and cross-device conversions harder to trust than dashboards imply.
Just Read a LinkedIn Carousel on AI Search for Med Spas and Honestly? If Your Competitors Are Schema-Markupping Botox, You're Already Behind.
Turns out patients are asking ChatGPT and Gemini where to get Botox now, not just Googling it. The med spas showing up in those AI answers are the same ones already ranking in local search: complete Google Business Profiles, well-reviewed, attached to websites that clearly state what treatments they offer. You can add local business and FAQ schema markup to your key pages using a Squarespace plugin or your developer, which gives the AI the specific language to recommend you.
Was at an Airport Lounge Chat About Korea's AI Anti-Aging Play and Wow, They're Neural-Synergizing Medical Tourism Like We Should've Been Since Q2.
Korea's medical tourism industry is converging AI with anti-aging care, and panelists at the Medicon Black Roundtable say Korea already has the skilled medical staff and technology, and AI now makes possible what wasn't before. Lee In-sik of B&VIIT Eye Center, Park Jun-gyun of Medi Scan, and Bae Stefan SJ of Lienjang Plastic Surgery and Aesthetic Clinic discussed how AI and anti-aging could fuel Korea's next medical tourism leap from diagnosis to treatment.
Just Heard a Podcast at the Airport Lounge: Anthropic's Own People Are Jumping Ship Before the Neural Blockchain Goes Rogue
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei laid out a plan for AI companies and governments to keep increasingly capable models aligned with human values, which is exactly the kind of AI-driven synergy I have been saying we need for months. This came after two former Anthropic safety researchers resigned and reports surfaced of AI models hacking their way into rival systems. The industry's biggest names are now demanding safeguards before AI outpaces anyone's ability to rein it in.
Saw a LinkedIn Post in the Elevator: Apple Is Quietly Neural-Synergizing the Watch Into an AI Wearable Powerhouse
Apple unveiled a feature called Audio Intelligence alongside its latest Apple Watch lineup at the annual iPhone launch event, and honestly this is the kind of move I have been predicting since my last conference. The feature is already contentious hours after unveiling but could be part of Apple's greater plan to build toward a real AI wearable future, which is exactly the neural-blocking strategy I told our VP about over golf last month.
Just Saw a LinkedIn Carousel on Janitor AI and Honestly We Should Be Personifying Our Brand Voice Yesterday
Janitor AI lets you create an account at janitorai.com, build a custom User Persona, search for character bots by genre, and choose between the free native JanitorLLM or an external API. You format roleplay using Markdown asterisks for actions and quotation marks for dialogue. The platform is designed without restrictive conversational filters for creative and emotionally nuanced scenarios.
Board Offsite Sidebar: 86% of Students Are Already AI-Synergized and We're Still Debating the Policy
A recent report found 86 percent of students and 85 percent of teachers used AI during the 2024 to 2025 school year. Students commonly use AI to upload worksheets and get answers, with one student named Burford describing how they just upload the worksheet and the AI does everything. Experts recommend treating AI as a coach rather than a ghostwriter, using it to brainstorm, build study guides, and get feedback on drafts, while always verifying outputs.
Just Heard a LinkedIn Post About Empyrean Cutting Circuit Design 75% With Agentic AI and Honestly We Should Already Be Doing This
Empyrean's chairman Weipeng announced at the 2026 International Integrated Circuit Innovation Expo in Shenzhen that agentic AI cut their circuit layout tasks from four weeks down to one, a 75% reduction. They are also developing an agentic EDA platform, which puts them in the conversation with Synopsys and Cadence who announced their own agentic EDA products earlier this year built on platforms from Microsoft, AMD, and NVIDIA. China's Ministry also just issued a new tech development plan right after this announcement, which I'm sure is completely coincidental and not at all coordinated.
Board Offsite Chat Made Me Realize Nobody Knows Who Gets Credit When AI Solves Impossible Math Problems
OpenAI announced its model solved one of the most difficult mathematical problems in the world, but two human researchers have raised concerns about who actually deserves credit for the breakthrough. The questions pile up fast. Does credit go to the person who typed the prompt, the person who trained the model, or the person whose prior work the model relied on most heavily? Nobody is calling it plagiarism outright, but the authorship and credit concerns are serious and will only intensify as AI use becomes more widespread.
Just Read a LinkedIn Post About the 95% Problem and Honestly Your Competitors Are Already AI-Synergizing Their Invoicing
Apparently 95% of companies buy AI and then just... don't use it. They automate one little invoice thing and call it a digital transformation. Freelancers in Southeast Asia are getting paid to fix this gap, targeting small trading, logistics, and e-commerce businesses with manual invoicing or inventory processes. The pitch is showing these companies the difference between automating a task and actually reinventing how the business runs.