Eric D. Brown, D.Sc. — AI & Technology Consulting

Weekly Intel - 2026-03-08

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700

Two themes running through everything this week: the gap between what AI promises and what it actually delivers, and infrastructure that turns out to be more fragile than anyone assumed.

Foto Friday: Framed Factory Butte

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700

There’s a spot out near Factory Butte where a small hole in a rock formation lines up perfectly with the butte itself. It’s not an arch in any grand sense; it’s barely big enough to shoot through. Most people who visit Factory Butte don’t know it exists, and even if they did, they’d probably walk right past it.

AI Productivity Measurement Just Broke

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0700

I ran across a LinkedIn post last week in which a consultant bragged about helping a client achieve “347% ROI on their AI initiative.” The comments were full of congratulations and requests for the methodology. Nobody asked the obvious question: how exactly did they measure that?

Weekly Intel - 2026-03-01

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700

The boundary between tech company and geopolitical actor basically disappeared this week. Anthropic turns down military contracts and gets banned from government systems. OpenAI picks up those same contracts. A joint US-Israel strike on Iran. I’ve been covering tech for a while now, and the speed at which these companies are being pulled into national security decisions is something new.

Foto Friday: Colors and Shapes

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0700

I drove out to the Moonscape Overlook near Hanksville, Utah, one morning, hoping for a good sunrise, but the sky had other plans with flat light, muted clouds, and not much color happening overhead. The kind of morning where you stand there for a few minutes, look around, and think: well, now what?

The Quiet Failures: How AI Breaks Without Anyone Noticing

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0700

The AI failure everyone loves to talk about is the spectacular kind. You know the ones where the chatbot tells a customer to eat glue or when the recommendation engine suggests winter coats in July. Those make the rounds on LinkedIn and Twitter because they’re funny, visible, and easy to point at.

Weekly Intel - 2026-02-22

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0700

A lot of Solow’s paradox this week: the gap between what technology promises and what it actually delivers. That theme runs through almost everything I’m reading right now.

Foto Friday: Standing in the Rain at Chimney Rock

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0700

In February 2021, my buddy Jeff and I were on our way to Moab, Utah, for some Milky Way photography and stopped near Ridgway, Colorado, for the day. Our plan was to get out for sunset out on Owl Pass without any real ‘subject’ in mind. We finally landed at Chimney Rock as a storm started rolling in.

Your Technology Roadmap Is Already Wrong

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 07:57:00 -0700

Most technology roadmaps assume we know things we don’t actually know:

We know exactly what the business will need in 18 months. We know our current technology choices will still make sense next year. We know no new tools or platforms will emerge that change everything. We know the team we have today is the team we’ll have tomorrow.

Weekly Intel: 2026-02-15

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Anthropic raises $30B in Series G funding at $380B post-money valuation . Anthropic secured $30 billion in Series G funding led by GIC and Coatue, reaching a post-money valuation of $380 billion. This massive investment, supported by over 20 major financial institutions including BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs, positions Anthropic to expand its enterprise AI and coding capabilities through increased research, product development, and infrastructure.

Weekly Intel - 2026-02-08

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 23:26:58 -0700

As European nations assert their digital independence and AI continues disrupting established business models, we’re seeing the real-world impact of these shifts play out across markets, policy decisions, and corporate strategy. The stories crossing my desk paint a picture of an industry in flux - from energy infrastructure to enterprise software, few sectors remain untouched by these transformative forces.

How to Evaluate an AI Vendor in 30 Minutes

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:03:17 -0700

The AI vendor market is flooded.

Everyone has a platform, a solution, a copilot, an agent. The demos are polished, the case studies are cherry-picked, and the sales teams are well-trained.

Weekly Intel - 2026-02-01

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 23:13:12 -0700

As Tesla grapples with mounting safety concerns and product-line decisions, and Amazon retreats from its ambitious retail experiments, we’re reminded that even tech giants must sometimes abandon their moonshots and return to their core strengths.

The Expertise Inversion Problem

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 20:07:42 -0700

A junior analyst produces a polished strategic recommendation in two hours. It looks professional, cites data and has a clear structure. It’s the kind of work that would have taken me weeks and multiple rounds of feedback when i was starting out.

Weekly Intel - 2026-01-24

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 01:13:02 -0700

This week’s developments highlight both the growing pains of the autonomous vehicle market and emerging cybersecurity threats, while broader economic shifts suggest we’re entering a period of significant change in how technology companies approach monetization and global markets.

The AI Coding Paradox

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:04:30 -0700

AI coding tools feel like they’re working. The data says otherwise.

A senior developer I know, sharp and with 15 years of experience, recently told me his team was “crushing it” with Claude Code.

Weekly Intel - 2026-01-11

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 17:04:03 -0700

The promises are starting to collide with reality.

This week brought a useful batch of evidence for anyone paying attention: cloud providers hiking prices with weekend announcements, hardware companies backing away from AI messaging, and a murder case exposing how little transparency we actually have when AI goes wrong. The pattern? Lots of companies are selling AI futures while quietly adjusting the present.

The Danger of "Everyone Knows"

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 18:26:07 -0700

When the fog rolls in, you can see the cliff but not the edge. Technology consensus works the same way.

The most expensive mistakes I’ve seen executives make start with the same phrase: “Everyone knows that…”

The Dashboard Delusion

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 12:48:11 -0700

The current finds its path around what’s fixed in place. The same principle applies to analytics; define the decision first, let the data flow from there.

Every executive I know wants better visibility. They want more dashboards and real-time data. Valid ‘want’ for sure, and the requests always sound reasonable. The results rarely are.

MilkyWayPlanner.com: A Planning Tool for Night Sky Photography

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 10:24:08 -0700

Photographing the night sky requires more planning than most types of photography. You need dark skies, minimal moonlight, and the right timing for celestial objects to be visible. Get any of these wrong and you drive home with nothing.

Competent or Just Confident?

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 18:28:29 -0700

A manufacturing company spent eight months evaluating AI vendors for quality control. They sat through demos, called references, and compared pricing. The vendor they chose had impressive case studies and a polished sales team. The AI system they deployed could detect defects with 95% accuracy, far better than manual inspection.

Weekly Intel: 2025-12-14

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 18:22:39 -0700

This week brought consolidation moves in media and enterprise tech that deserve attention. Paramount made a hostile play for Warner Bros. IBM is buying Confluent. Microsoft announced price hikes. Two separate legal developments are forcing Apple and Google to rethink how they govern their app ecosystems.

My Milky Way Planning Process

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 12:13:36 -0700

I used to waste a lot of nights chasing the Milky Way. I’d check the moon phase, pick a date that looked good, drive an hour or two to a dark location, and then watch clouds roll in. Or I’d arrive to find the galactic core wasn’t where I expected it to be. Or the moon would rise at 1 AM and wash out the sky before I got the shots I wanted. My Milky Way planning was basically guesswork.

The Disconnect

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 17:08:48 -0700

When companies ask “what should we do with AI?” they usually ask the wrong people. Their technical teams know the technology but not the pain points. Their executives have seen impressive demos but can’t really evaluate the claims.

Foto Friday: Sentinel

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 14:45:50 -0700

Some shots you plan. Others find you.

I was out scouting for Milky Way locations in Colorado during the summer. I had a bunch of places in mind, with plans in place, knew when the Milky Way would rise, and a hope that the weather would hold.