Artificial Intelligence

Introduction Organizations are adopting AI at a pace that is genuinely remarkable. In 2023, roughly 30% of employees reported using AI in some professional capacity. By 2025, that number had climbed to 76%. This is not incremental change. It is a rapid, widespread shift in how large numbers of people do their work. But here's the number that deserves as much attention: only 1 in 50 AI investments delivers transformational organizational value. Only 1 in 5 delivers any measura

Introduction EDUCAUSE — the nonprofit that shapes technology strategy for higher education institutions — spent months in early 2026 developing a framework for what AI-enhanced education should actually look like. The resulting framework is built around an acronym: ACTUAL. Agency. Connection. Trust. Uniqueness. Adaptability. Lifelong Learning. What strikes me about this framework is what it prioritizes. It doesn't start with capabilities. It starts with values. It asks not "w

Introduction The 2023 Hollywood strikes were the longest and most consequential labor action the entertainment industry had seen in decades. The Writers Guild of America walked out in May; SAG-AFTRA joined in July. Together, they shut down the production of scripted film and television for 148 days. The core issues were familiar ones — residuals, minimum staffing — but the new and defining issue was AI. What the writers and actors were fighting about, at its core, was whether

Introduction AI is now one of the significant technological edges in competitive sport. Performance analysis systems process biomechanical data with ~85% forecast accuracy and ~80% time reduction compared to manual methods. Injury prevention systems integrate training load, sleep, recovery, and movement data to identify elevated risk before symptoms appear. Real-time tactical AI analyzes opponent tendencies and suggests in-game adjustments. All of this is in active deployment

Introduction Generative AI is the latest wave to hit music. And unlike its predecessors, it doesn't just change the distribution of music. It changes the creation of it. A person with no musical training can now type a sentence and receive a professionally-produced full song in seconds. That capability is already on streaming platforms. Whether it's legal, ethical, or both is being answered in real time in courtrooms, boardrooms, and the streets. The Legal Landscape Universal

Introduction Leadership has always been about making decisions under uncertainty with incomplete information. That hasn't changed. What's changing is the nature of the support systems around those decisions — and the new accountability questions they create. According to McKinsey's 2026 State of Organizations report, AI has shifted from isolated tools to platforms sitting "at the center of workflows, decisions, and customer journeys." It's no longer optional infrastructure. I

Introduction Every generation of communicators faces a technology that promises to change everything. The printing press. Radio. Television. The internet. Social media. Each one rewired how information traveled, who controlled it, and what professional communication looked like. Each one also preserved something essential that the previous generation worried would be lost. I think about that history when I read about what AI is doing to journalism right now. The fear is under

Introduction Understanding why misinformation sticks — at the level of neuroscience and cognitive science — doesn't just explain the phenomenon. It points toward the responses that actually work. For anyone engaged in public affairs, strategic communication, education, or any field where truth-telling is a professional commitment, this is essential knowledge. The First Problem: Illusory Truth When a false belief gets corrected, the correction doesn't erase the original claim.

Introduction The NIST AI Risk Management Framework exists to fix a specific problem: the people who understand AI technology can't always explain the risk, and the people who understand the risk don't always understand the technology. Released in January 2023, the AI RMF is a governance framework — a structured way for organizations to think about, talk about, and act on AI risks. The Four Functions GOVERN is the foundation — structures, policies, roles, and culture. MAP iden

Introduction For most of my career in military public affairs, the information environment was shaped by human decisions — what to say, when to say it, and through which channels. The challenge was strategic: how do you communicate credibly in a complex, contested environment while maintaining institutional trust? That challenge hasn't gone away. It has multiplied. A growing body of peer-reviewed research and policy analysis confirms what many communicators have sensed for ye

Introduction In February 2026, diplomats, defense officials, and technology leaders gathered in A Coruña, Spain, for the third international summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain — a process known as REAIM. These summits have been, since their inception in 2023, one of the few serious multilateral efforts to establish guardrails on how governments use artificial intelligence in warfare. The outcome was sobering. Only 35 nations signed the summit

AI-powered NPCs are transforming video games from scripted characters into responsive digital participants that learn, adapt, and evolve alongside players. Introduction For most of gaming's history, the non-player character, the NPC, has been a kind of furniture. A vendor who says the same three lines. A guard who patrols a fixed route. An enemy who follows a predictable script. The NPC existed to populate the world, to give the player something to react to, but it wasn't a p