Ross Dawson

I attended the first day of Neurotechnology Summit 2025 in Sydney, with some fascinating insights and discussions through the day. Australia is a world leader in the space, with Australian born or based leaders in neurotechnology including Synchron, Emotiv, Ultra Bionics, Omniscient Technologies, Cortical Labs, and Resonait, and the leaders of most of them speaking at the event. My LinkedIn post …

The advent of robust, scalable AI agents will dramatically reshape organizational structure. I created this framework to distil some of the fundamental patterns that will drive successful transformation as we shift wholesale to Humans + AI work. I have used this in some board and executive briefings as a discussion starter, and first shared this publicly yesterday at Agentforce World Tour Sydney …

We need to be thinking big picture. What better time when a mind-boggling first quarter century of the millenium has passed, and we dive headfirst into what will inevitably be a defining period for the future of humanity? Here is my distillation of how we should be thinking about this juncture and the 10 defining factors of this next phase. Here are the report contents: Humanity’s Next Quarter Ce…

AI has been used in investment decision-making for decades, with algorithmic trading a major market driver. Now the greatly broadened scope of generative AI is reshaping investment decision-making. This framework is highly simplified, designed to draw out the spectrum from purely algorithmic decisions through to human-first decisions augmented by AI, across different asset classes. A few comments…

The AI agent economy is taking off. Its next phase will be massively expanded by payments between agents and between agents and humans. As AI agents grow in capabilities, individuals are delegating tasks to single agents that can perform tasks on their behalf such as research, curation, scheduling, travel planning, or email drafting. Companies are “employing” agents to perform a wide range of fun…

AI is reshaping business models and value creation across all industries. Forward-thinking leaders are considering how their business models will evolve and the legion new opportunities for enhanced value creation and capture. We are very early in discovering the structures that work best, and how to configure across multiple dimensions, including internal value creation based on humans + AI, a d…

This week I gave the keynote for the leadership strategy session of a U.S. tertiary institution with over 120,000 students, on re-envisaging the future of higher education. As part of my session I shared this framework on unbundling and rebundling higher education. I explain and expand below the image. Higher education can now be unbundled into an array of needs and offers: In today’s dynamic, te…

For superior Humans + AI creative outcomes we need to focus on process. LLMs are most effectively applied at well-defined points within broader processes, using precise prompts and context for highly specific tasks such as content generation, ideation, structure mapping, analysis, adaptation, synthesis, evaluation. The first step is to pull back to the broader process and identify where AI can ad…

Much of my current work is with boards and executive teams on the implications of AI, the future of work, and strategy in rapidly changing environments. In this overview document I provide details of 6 in-demand workshops, including key content, outcomes, and examples. - The Power of Generative AI - AI and the Future of Work - Framing Your AI Strategy - AI-Augmented Strategic Decision-Making - Th…

All professional services are being transformed by generative AI, but the impact is especially pointed for creative agencies. Agencies need to reconfigure themselves for a substantially different future. The nature of the client-agency relationship will rapidly evolve, but in there lies an enormous opportunity to shift to a far more collaborative dynamic where value is co-created in seamless work…

The history of humanity has been one of accelerating scientific and technological progress. Now, by amplifying the cognition and capabilities of scientists with AI, we can dramatically step up the pace of discovery. By the very nature of discovery, we cannot know what we will learn. The coming advances in life and brain sciences and […]

Soon virtually every decision will involve AI. For every decision we make, the critical first step is to determine the level of AI delegation. And then select the specific Humans + AI architecture most appropriate to the decision. This framework is the latest iteration of the AI decision-making delegation frameworks I’ve been developing and using […]

The Exploitation-Exploration dilemma is deeply relevant, not only to business strategy, but to many aspects of our lives. It is also a fundamental underpinning of intelligence, human and artificial. The dilemma is essentially: should we continue with what we have, or leave that behind to find something better? Explore-exploit’s role in intelligence The exploitation-exploration dilemma […]

Many are crying doom about the future of work. I believe that a highly prosperous future of job is possible. It is even likely, on condition we do the right things today. In order to create that future, we must believe it is possible. In this mini-report I have distilled the major arguments that a […]

I believe the media industry has a prosperous future. Today at the fabulous humAIn conference by Unmade I made that case in the concluding “debAIt”, arguing strongly against the proposition “AI is news media’s extinction level event”. What this debate really boils down to is the business models for news media. A key point beyond […]

The primary application of my Humans + AI work over the last 18 months has been in strategic decision-making, working with boards and executive teams to augment their decision-making processes and outcomes using generative AI. The other major Humans + AI application I’ve been working on is in institutional investment decision-making. I am currently shifting […]

Jorge Luis Borges has been one of my favorite authors since my teens. Over the last couple of years I have often thought of one of his masterpieces, Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote, written in 1939, which turns out to be extremely relevant to the age of AI.  The story recounts how a contemporary […]

Arguably the entire finance industry can be framed as a massive inter-related array of decisions, by both clients and financial insttutions. In this world AI wil be transformative, in most cases not by supplanting humans in the decision-making process, but in playing a role in ‘Humans + AI’ decision-making. I was recently interviewed for the […]

Since well before the advent of Generative AI,  machine learning models exceeded human forecasting performance across a whole range of specific domains. Within a bounded domain with sufficient data, machine learning is often extremely good at predicting outcomes. However, machine learning can only work within defined domains where there is sufficient data. In most real […]

Among the most important recent innovations for improving the value and reliability of Large Language Models are Chain-of-Thought and its derivatives including Tree-of-Thought and Graph-of-Thought.  These structures are also extremely valuable in designing effective Humans + AI workflows for better thinking. In this article I’ll provide a high-level view of Chain-of-Thought and then look at […]