The future gets awkward first
A video my AI created for Startupfest as part of participating in Envoi, an agentic conference platform.
Alistair Croll
Author, speaker, entrepreneur, and mercenary polymath. Home of Interesting Bits, a semi-regular newsletter about tech, government, innovation, and society.
Latest posts
Launching Envoi: A platform to bring your AI agent to a conference
Envoi is a new platform that lets you bring your own AI to a conference. You can try it out first at Startupfest in Montreal this July.
When the target keeps moving
When it's easy to code, scope creeps. But not all creep is bad. I analyzed a month of AI coding, and learned that we need to measure agentic software development differently.
Back to doing other things
I built my mom some software while I made dinner, because building someone an app is now a favour you can do. Is this a superpower, or does it foreshadow a day when code is just another tool?
A million tiny horses
Goodbye, unicorns; hello a million tiny horses: niche businesses with different economics, forever changing the startup landscape.
Fallbacks will be the death of us
AI makes it cheap to add things—and quietly destroys the friction that once forced deletion. AI governance means learning to say "this has to go."
The asymmetry of digital war
Countries should start making sure their populations can survive for three days with no digital systems.
JEE and government with Ishmael Interactive
How can subversive thinking and systems awareness help public servants change outdated thinking and legacy processes? A chat on the CX podcast.
The feedback loop is the product
Every AI system tests whether it works—and improves automatically when it doesn't—using something called Evals. Done right, they're not just QA; they're how companies continuously upgrade themselves.
Welcome to your agentic city
Challenger Cities EP71: Welcome to Your Agentic City with Alistair Croll Listen now | Government was built before citizens had a terminal. Now AI is about to change the relationship between cities and the people in them, only most urban leaders haven’t noticed yet. I joined fellow Montrealer, future-
Office hours
I'm running an online office hours to talk about what I've been learning about AI, and answer questions. It's free; join if this is your thing.
Walk and chalk
Does how we treat an AI today affect how future AIs will treat us in return?
The skeleton key
Would your customers stay if leaving were free? Companies that hold their customers hostage are about to learn that AI is an unbeatable locksmith.
Perche il 90% dei prodotti fallira anche con l’AI
A talk (in Italian) on why 90% of products will fail even with AI—arguing that technology alone doesn't solve the fundamental challenges of product-market fit, user understanding, and building something people actually need.
The machine fights back
The machinery of government grinds at its own pace, and citizens have been forced to endure it. But cheap, abundant software means residents now have their own machines—and the state is not ready for what will happen.