In the first two posts, I looked at how AI is reshaping outcomes at a global level.
But this dynamic doesn’t just play out between countries, it plays out within them, because even where access exists, control is uneven.
In the first post, I looked at the idea that AI is pulling us in two directions at once.
Massively accelerated disruption on one side, and the promise of prosperity on the other.
What both framings gloss over is a more uncomfortable question:
Who actually gets access to that prosperity?
Because AI isn't arriving evenly.
It looks like the Labour party is once again preparing to shoot itself in the foot, seemingly because the current Prime Minister is boring.
It's true that Kier Starmer lacks the charisma of... well... cold rice pudding, but after the clown car politics of the previous 14 years of Tory governments, I'll take boring and beige over braying and backbiting.
There’s a framing I’ve been coming back to recently, borrowed from Mo Gawdat.
During the Cold War, the dominant paradigm was MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction — but Gawdat suggests that with AI, we have the potential for something different:
MAP — Mutually Assured Prosperity.
It’s a neat idea, but I’m not convinced it’s that simple.
Every engineering organisation has its stories.
Nobody is ever entirely sure whether these are:
Over the last few posts, I’ve been writing about AI from a fairly close range — how it changes engineering teams, delivery dynamics, capability development, and the shape of organisations.
In other words, the micro view — what happens inside teams when capability, speed, and decision-making all shift at once.
But the more I’ve thought about it, the harder it’s becoming to ignore the bigger picture, as the same forces are playing out at a much larger scale.
I am not one to shy away from "colourful" language, and I have been known to utilise the odd four letter word to provide emphasis, punctuation, or even comedic effect.
But if I had to ban one four letter word from business vocabulary entirely, I know exactly what it would be:
Just
Conan! What is best in life?
To crush your project deadlines, see them launched before you, and to hear the satisfaction of their users.
When I wrote about my career history late last year in The seven year itch, I called out a few of the projects that I have worked on, but I have been doing some introspection recently as part of updating this site, and realised that I have worked on some incredible projects that I should take more obvious pride in.
Today I saw a LinkedIn post from a COO saying:
Today developers who spend 3 days writing "clean" code that someone else would have shipped in 4 hours with AI are no longer rewarded for their dilligence: they're penalised for their slowness.
What the customer is now measuring:
- How many features did you ship?
- Does it work?
- Does it create value?
The market no longer pays for the craft of writing code; it pays for results.
What if the best thing a senior dev can do in 2026 is teach their team to ship faster, not code cleaner?
Friends, I have opinions...
If you spend 5 minutes scrolling through LinkedIn[^1], you will no doubt be greeted with multiple "think pieces" about how AI is making everything faster, enabling all of the hustle and grind aficionados to hustle and grind extra hard while they maximise shareholder value, or something.
It sounds great — enabling the worlds most entrepreneurial entrepreneurs to entrepreneur at never-before-seen speed, making a thousand decisions before they've finished their first coffee — but I am personally coming to realise that it has a very specific personal downside when it comes to quality, focus, and cognitive load, and it looks like I'm not the only one.