Jurgen Appelo

My 18-Month Battle With Expert Hallucinations A cautionary tale of how both AI and human experts can be completely wrong

Algorithms confidently extrapolate from historical patterns, while humans confidently apply their pet frameworks. Sometimes the best expertise is knowing when to ignore all experts.
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/my-18-mont...
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/my-18-mont...

Is It Time for a New AI? A Call to Stop the Slop

Is stopping to ask "why" a luxury, or our only path forward?
thehumanplaybook.substack.com/p/is-it-time...

Beyond the AI Bubble: The Infrastructure Layer Everyone's Missing Why enterprise platforms deploying 50,000+ agents matter more than AGI speculation

Infrastructure (chips, data centers) is booming while investments in foundation models face a potential bubble due to unclear ROI.
theagentarchitect.substack.com/p/ai-infrast...

🌀🗞 The FLUX Review, Ep. 212 October 23rd, 2025

Appelo's Law:
read.fluxcollective.org/p/212

You Cannot Please Everyone Those who criticize AI-assisted writing are snobbish fools failing to grasp the idea of a target audience.

The outrage over AI-assisted writing is nothing more than performative nonsense that exposes people as the snobbish critics nobody asked for.
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/you-cannot...
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/you-cannot...

From Zero to Substack Bestseller My Seven-Month Journey to 100 Paying Subscribers

After seven months of going all-in on Substack, I've officially reached bestseller status with over 100 paying subscribers supporting my writing journey. MVP = ✅
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/from-zero-...
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/from-zero-...

First Law of Value in the Agentic Era: Proximity to User Intent Part 1 explores how competitive advantage shifts from owning systems of record to capturing where intent begins and orchestrating work from there. At Dreamforce, Salesforce moved the moat upstream.

Brilliant strategic advice.

5 Questions to Reintegrate Your Individuality Factories needed consistent output, so their workers needed to be predictable, reliable, and remarkably interchangeable.

It's us humans who will have to deal with the wicked problems.
thestillwandering.substack.com/p/5-question...

Why Everyone Misread MIT’s 95% AI “Failure” Statistic? The study doesn’t reveal a crisis—it documents AI’s normal learning curve, the same adoption bottlenecks that shaped PCs and the internet.

It's often not the AI tech failing, but poor business integration and implementation that cause projects to stumble.
www.2ndorderthinkers.com/p/why-everyo...

The Decade of Agents From brain to body. Coherence over autonomy.

The "year of AI agents" is turning into a decade.
unhypedai.substack.com/p/the-decade...

The Stochastic Parrot vs. the Sophistic Monkey: Why I Trust AI More Than Most Humans In a world drowning in human bias and misinformation, artificial intelligence offers surprisingly reasonable answers.

AI systems already outperform the average person in logic, humility, and basic coherence—yet our technophobia prevents us from acknowledging this.
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/the-stocha...
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/the-stocha...

Making AI Adoption Work: A Practical Series - part 1 The 5 Critical Foundations (That Most Organizations Skip)

AI tech explanations are everywhere. But culture, processes, and context are the real challenge.

#AILeadership #OrgChange #DigitalTransformation
www.fullstackhr.io/p/making-ai-...

A reflection on AI, power, and the path of least resistance ... the way we’re being shaped, not by the tools we use, but by the hands that control them.

Are algorithms increasingly shaping your reality?
diamantinoalmeida.substack.com/p/a-reflecti...

King Sam and AI Circularity: How Concentrated Bets on OpenAI Create Systemic Risk Vendor financing in infrastructure is normal. The scale and concentration in AI are unprecedented. So is the dependence on one actor’s durable growth moat.

OpenAI is the AI ecosystem's keystone. But if capital or infrastructure fails, the entire network instantly collapses. A single point of failure for our future. #AIVulnerability #TechRisk #OpenAICrisis
www.decodingdiscontinuity.com/p/king-sam-a...

The Seven Trillion Dollar Scam Why I Refuse to Call Degeneration Progress

AGI: The goalposts keep shrinking. Soon, 'victory' will just mean 'fools those consuming AI slop.' Are we really aiming for intelligence?

#AGI #AIReality #MovingGoalposts
www.alilybit.com/p/the-seven-...

The Impact of AI on Work (Isn't About Jobs) Why industries reshape first - and what that means for you. Join our free Work 3 Webinar on Thursday 16 October to explore this shift.

AI isn't just new tech; it's reframing work. Jobs become capabilities, blending human & AI agents. Orchestration is the new superpower. #FutureOfWork #AIImpact #WorkRevolution
wrk3.substack.com/p/the-impact...

When Autonomy Becomes Abdication A new paper from TUM exposes the paradox at the heart of AI autonomy.

Autonomy without understanding is abdication. Giving AI power to decide without capacity to care leads to decisions without responsibility. We risk delegation without accountability. #AIethics #TechResponsibility #FutureOfAI

Superintelligence and the Decline of Human Interdependence What happens to humanity when we no longer need each other?

The danger is not AI. It's certain humans with AI.
www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/superintel...

NotebookLM Got Crazy Powerful: Here's How I Used It to Learn Something Really Hard And some useful prompts to customize my learning.

Reframing the learning journey.
aimaker.substack.com/p/learn-ai-a...

Chimeric Talent: The Workforce AI Is Quietly Creating Leading when your employees become role shapeshifters

I talked about organizations as shapeshifters years ago. Nice to see the metaphor still holds.
decision.substack.com/p/chimeric-t...

Paying AIs to Read My Books Some authors have it backwards.

As usual, Kevin Kelly's thinking is years ahead of everyone else.
kevinkelly.substack.com/p/paying-ais...

Scrum Is Done. Finished. History. We're going to need dual-track business agility.

Scrum was the bullet train of work management—fast, revolutionary, and unstoppable. Now it's the family minivan blocking the left lane.
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/scrum-is-d...
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/scrum-is-d...

Vibe engineering Plus news from OpenAI DevDay, GPT-5 Pro, gpt-image-1-mini, and Python 3.14

Your software skills matter more than ever. #VibeCoding #SoftwareEngineering #TechSkills
simonw.substack.com/p/vibe-engin...

The map and the territory “…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire itself an entire Province.

We move ever higher and higher up the stack. Where's the end?
engineeringharmony.substack.com/p/the-map-an...

TBM 382: Product-Centricity When You Don't Sell A Digital Product I have been thinking a lot about the struggles of non-digital-product-selling companies when it comes to adopting more product-centric ways of working.

Product transformation isn't just renaming roles or buzzword bingo.

#ProductManagement #OrgTransformation #AgileMisconceptions
cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-382-pr...

Have You Been Workslopped Yet? AI is making you clean up your colleague's mess. Here's what should you do about it.

Business is rapidly achieving peak bullshit.
decision.substack.com/p/have-you-b...

Freelancing in a Shrinking Pond with More Sharks When the AI Boogeyman Comes, Start to Boogie

When AI takes over, it's not easy finding yourself a better place.
substack.com/inbox/post/1...

How to Cope with Uncertainty About the Future Stop worrying about strategy. Start developing your options. Don't make a plan; make a platform.

Stop crafting strategic plans for scenarios that will never materialize. Start building adaptable platforms instead.
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/how-to-cop...
substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/how-to-cop...

The Artificial Spectator Adam Smith, AI, and the Outsourcing of Moral Sentiments

Who will decide?
blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/the-artifi...

The problem with agentic AI in 2025 Too much automation can blind you to the real opportunity

Governance becomes the key determiner.
platforms.substack.com/p/the-proble...