Raoul Dobal /

The archive

Writing

Technology, leadership and the human future.

11 November 2026

Taking a humanoid robot into everyday life

I'm going to China in May 2027, and I'm curious enough about humanoid robots to consider bringing one home. I'd like to try an experiment and see where it takes me, including finding out what I might actually want to do with one.

21 October 2026

A business trip without the laptop

What happened when I took a phone and an AI minion on a business trip, left the laptop at home, and took the meeting follow-up for a walk.

14 October 2026

Sovereign, but for what?

Where greater sovereignty would make a meaningful difference, and what a board must be prepared to support once it chooses that path.

7 October 2026

Why are we still learning this way?

How AI guidance could help mandatory training build understanding while preserving consistent learning requirements and credible assessment.

7 October 2026

AI's unusual performance review

What the promotion from Artificial Intelligence to Super Intelligence asks us to assume before we have examined the evidence.

29 September 2026

What Should an AI System Remember?

A working distinction between source records, curated knowledge, mental models, operational memory and project continuity.

18 September 2026

Agent-Ready Policies

What an AI agent needs to act on a policy, and where a human decision must remain.

15 September 2026

The Missing First Rung

When AI takes over junior tasks, organisations still need a way to develop experienced people.

12 September 2025

Japan's AI Strategy

While Brussels focused on strict regulations to protect citizens, Tokyo aimed to unleash AI's potential. One builds walls, while the other plants seeds.

5 September 2025

The AI Culture - US versus EU

I watched two very different announcements this week and felt the Atlantic Ocean grow a little wider.

15 August 2025

The playbook is broken

Everyone's obsessed with efficiency gains, but the real transformation happens when AI breaks your existing approach entirely.

23 May 2025

Politeness Pays—Just Not for OpenAI

Turns out, when it comes to AI, it's a luxury. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, recently revealed that the collective politeness of ChatGPT users—those extra "pleases" and "thank yous"—has cost the company tens of millions of dollars in additional computational expenses.

8 March 2025

The End of Knowledge Workers: Enter the knowledge professional

The time where industrialized society's primary goal was gathering information has ended. Information is now abundant and widely accessible, presenting the new challenge of effectively combining and applying this information to drive innovation. We must evolve from passive recipients of data to active creators, capable of synthesizing ideas and applying them in practical, innovative ways.

Ideas are a starting point

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