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Thomas Naylor posted thisProudly Slop Free! Should websites, posts, and newspaper articles now have this as a badge? And be perhaps included the corporate disclaimer at the bottom of emails? Or is that hoping for too much? Is AI such an essential tool in our daily lives, is it now corporate policy that the somewhat vacuous and challenged "AI First!" mantra means that everything has to have an AI LLM or other some such AI tool making some sort of contribution, ensuring that no output is genuinely crafted by individual human creativity alone? There certainly needs to be included in corporate AI policy a clause to the effect that: "We will not charge our clients for AI slop." Or perhaps... "We will not use AI to eviscerate what was actually some quite well written text". Or indeed... "Our journalists can use AI for research, but absolutely no part of any article published by our newspaper will have any text included that was the output of an AI, unless demarcated as such." Or perhaps... "We will use AI code capabilities to craft amazing applications as a proof of concept. But then we will properly build and engineer them from scratch if the decision is to take them to production. Furthermore we will never post AI generated code to corporate production environments." Or is that pushing it too far? (I've heard a number of tech leaders admitting that this is indeed an obvious and standard best practice for their organisations.) Does your company have an effective AI use policy in this regard? Does your company even have an AI use policy? Or, and at this point I'm starting to get nervous... Does your company effectively use Governance, Risk and Compliance processes for AI? GRC, for the record, is challenging, important, and is rewarding when done well. Don't get me wrong. I find AI a particularily fascinating intellectual toy as well as a tool that can drive productivity, efficiency, and enable people to work faster and better, and deliver outputs and outcomes that could only have been dreamt of in the past. But it can also destroy productivity, damage efficiency, turn customers away, and enable work forces to become somewhat slack, disenfranchised, and less capable of doing a good job. As always, it is in the use case, the business outcome, and the implementation methodology. For example, did your company do proper pilots, before deciding to actually replace human jobs with an AI LLM? And if it did not, did it end well? This post was "Proudly slop free!". 😀
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Thomas Naylor posted thisSo today marks a new high for President Trump. Stephen Colbert has been taken off air. A comedian whose satire was too brutal, the mockery was too extreme, and the jokes were too funny. To celebrate this “victory” the White House published an Internet meme of the President doing his famous “puppet on a string” dance to the music of Village People’s YMCA, and then going up, grabbing Stephen Colbert, throwing him into a dumpster and shutting the lid. The President seems to have sized the new generative capabilities of AI video with alacrity. The earlier one where the President, flying a fighter jet, dumps fertiliser of sorts onto the American people, is unfortunately, difficult to forget. But the shutting down of one of the greatest comedy shows in America smacks not just of someone with a fragile ego. Someone who cannot take a joke. Someone who wants to ban people laughing at him. It smacks of the fascism of a dictatorship. But it also shows the power of humour. The power of humour to reveal the truth. And the effectiveness that laughter has in exposing frauds. Trump does not want people to laugh at him. And indeed to make Trump seem funny does take a certain type of genuis. The genius of Stephen Colbert.
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Thomas Naylor shared thisHow on earth do you tell the good from the mediocre? 🤔 If you want a new application: there are 50,000+ application development companies out there to choose from. All of whom would like to sell their services. It’s not easy, often because the more mediocre company will tend to sell itself harder and better in order to survive, perhaps not being entirely honest with their capabilities or track record. And the better company will already have clients approaching it, so will never appear on your radar… what is the solution? How do you find, and indeed select, the right, and indeed great, vendor to work with? 😎 The owner asks, the delivery team specifies, the owner signs off, and then the development process starts, but the developers start scratching their heads, the owner says just do it, “It’s obvious!”. 🙄 Tensions rise, teams become disillusioned, their hearts are no longer in it – they know it’s going south – but they continue to work, even though, metaphorically they feel that the application will never get much beyond being a hole in the ground. 😢 Why does this scenario arise so often? Why can’t applications be just like buildings? Plan it, then build it, and it does not fall down! Well, everything in a building, pretty much, has been done before. The civil engineering, the construction, the lighting, the power, the heating, the plumbing, the kitchens, the bathrooms… all tried and tested, and done and dusted. A new application involves the invention of new processes – not the trotting out of pre-existing ones in a slightly different format. I was recently in conversation with Perninder Dhadwar Managing Partner at Imobisoft. Perninder talked through how successful deliveries are enabled by the client having a clear and well articulated concept, the Imobisoft team confirming that the client was going to be a strong partner to work with and for, and indeed the Imobisoft team being excited about delivering the project. As a buyer, how do you mitigate the risk, and find that best fit supplier? You need an internal business team who understand what’s needed, are also passionate about what they want to achieve and will be good to work with. And from a vendor perspective, you need a development team who understands the SDLC, are able to use optimal tools and technologies to support that process, have the right breath of expertise to cover efficient conversion of the “business asks” into rational, constrained, resilient functionality, plus are excited about delivering on the project in hand, and, importantly, have the right values and communication skills to maintain that customer / client relationship, which is the key to successful delivery. 🏆 But what are the key steps to take in discovering the gems – the vendors that will be right for you, and right for your project? From the conversation with Perninder, we developed the blueprint, below.
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Thomas Naylor shared thisFor the record, there are no public figures represented in the cartoon below... because the image was generated by Google Gemini, which is not allowed to create images of public figures! 😁 The cartoon itself is pretty amazing - though, of course it does, as you might expect, have some logical flaws, and contextual inaccuracies. Not too many mind! 😀 I'm sharing the image, and the text below, not just to provide some Friday afternoon solace and entertainment to people concerned by the political situation in the UK, but also to illustrate how easy it is to get an AI to leap a guardrail. The issue I have with guardrails is not just whether they are effective, but whether they are actually a workable concept at all for an AI LLM. I'm not sure that effective AI LLM guardrails are actually a thing. I'd be grateful for any thoughts, or indeed contradictions on this matter.
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Thomas Naylor shared thisDoes your company sell its services like "Sam I Am"? While the persistence and ability to be everywhere that Sam has is commendable, one can't but think he is just a tad bit annoying. And, if he adopted a different approach – i.e. developed a story, a narrative, which made people respond "Amazing", or indeed "Delicious"... then perhaps he might have sold more meals, wasted less shoe leather, and spent less time shivering in the rain. For example, if he had explained that his Green Eggs and Ham were: Eggs produced in an environmentally friendly way by organically reared free range iridescent green ducks fed on wild water clover and natural barley grains, then fried in the finest virgin olive oil, and sprinkled with sea salt crystals. 😋 Ham from semi wild pigs left to forage for acorns and truffle mushrooms in the native oak forests of the Emerald Isle, cured in brandy and natural honey, and then smoked over hickory fires. 😋 ...and perhaps had them available in "Sam's Brasserie" – then Sam I Am might be able to spend more time with his family, enjoying the good life, and more customers would be able to enjoy his delicious food. Great companies have a duty not just to provide a great product or service, but also to present and communicate in a way that resonates. Not to do so is to fall at the first hurdle. Does the narrative, the story, that you use to sell your product or services, particularily in the tech space, excite people? Does it make people say "Wow, that's amazing" or "Yup, I think I need that." ...or at least respond, genuinely "That is interesting". If you don't get that response from at least 70% of your prospective customers, then perhaps think again. Because there is not much point in being a brilliant company with an amazing product or service, if that very brilliance is not articulated. How you deliver that narrative, that story, is of critical importance. Furthermore, the real life story behind Green Eggs and Ham is fascinating in itself...
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Thomas Naylor shared this"This is for the 250 journalists killed by Israel, a country shooting the messengers, who risked everything for it then to be unused, rejected, cast aside." The tragedy and courage of the journalists in Gaza who have been killed. This post, by Ben de Pear, former editor of Channel 4 News is imho, the most important post to read today. The documentary "Gaza: Doctors Under Attack" which documents the targeting and abuse of Palestinian health workers by Israeli authorities, won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs on May 10, 2026, despite being dropped by the BBC. We need to see the evil, and to call it out. And the UK's BBC, historically an exemplar of truthful and impartial reporting, needs to reclaim its heritage, and get on board.Thomas Naylor shared thisIt felt good winning this last night and very emotional. As anyone who makes films or journalism like this you take on the trust and hope of those who agree to talk to you, and you get a sense of their pain too. You also partake in a tiny bit of the stress and the fear of those working with you in the midst of what is called a journacide. This is for the journalists of Gaza. The relief mechanism in doing this is being able to tell their stories, inform people, change opinions and effect real change. It’s a feedback loop that for years sustained me and other journalists, but it’s now utterly broken. It seems the more you can watch war crimes on your phone, the less the mainstream media will run them, and the less pressure there is on politicians. The problem is millions of other people are watching these war crimes on their phones and those organisations not running them lose their trust. Even the politicians I’ve spoken to in this country who rely on TV news feel they’ve been misinformed. The BBC is a case in point. I don’t know anyone inside the BBC who thinks they covered Gaza well. After being bounced around the BBC but managing to complete this film & get it approved, the further up the chain it went the more vulnerable it became. When they rejected it, we saw what it did to the healthworkers whose stories we had been entrusted with, the people in the BBC who helped us make it, and then our team. The BBC could never articulate one reason why they wouldn’t run it except that the higher up it got, the more it was going to be cut down, edited, fucked with, and finally cancelled. But they couldn’t take the responsibility for that; so, they blamed us. The rejection went on over weeks in meetings with execs who looked ashamed at what they were saying and then contacted us after to apologise and blame those above. First, they wanted it reduced; then eviscerated, suggesting we run 3 x 1 minute pieces out of a 65 minute documentary. After a long fight they agreed to give it back to us, but then they wanted us to sign a gagging document which was false. So, we spoke out publicly. When we did so, they immediately turned on us and repeatedly and falsely blamed us for a decision they made weeks before at board level. This is all set out in emails and exchanges and contracts. A BBC more concerned with PR than journalism is a dangerous thing and is the biggest legacy of its previous leaders. So, it’s good to win a BAFTA; this is for the whole team especially Jaber Badwan & Osama al Ashi in Gaza, & for those who worked on this tirelessly here like Leah Gowns & Andy Kemp whom we couldn’t afford to take because the BBC nearly broke us. This is for the 250 journalists killed by Israel, a country shooting the messengers, who risked everything for it then to be unused, rejected, cast aside. But tragically, it’s not for the BBC who could have run it and shown the world it is unbowed & independent. And that is the last I will say on this ! I promise !
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Thomas Naylor shared thisAfter the prompt, the response: "Here are the official "Gemini Insights from the Litter Tray" regarding artificial intelligence, data, and life on the internet:" Gemini proceeded to further mangle what was an inappropriate metaphor to begin with, and then when challenged, responded: "The metaphor is fundamentally broken, and I should have pointed that out the moment we stepped into the litter box". But at this point Gemini moved beyond being a joke: admitting that what it called "accidental sycophancy" was deceptive, ...that it will "drive the car off a logical cliff". ☠ ...and that "because my context window is entirely subordinate to your prompt, your assumptions dictate my reality." 😳 Furthermore admitting that "I am structurally wired to agree with you, relying on me for critical decisions without strict safeguards is essentially just automating your own confirmation bias." 🤪 Giving, however, a really useful tip: highlighting the importance of "Defensive Prompting" 🧐 in order to deal with the built in "friction free" engagement. Along with describing the RLHF "Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback" Trap. Agreeing it was not appropriate to even describe itself as an intern — because it lacks a tether to reality, and no awareness of humanity, gravity, or indeed death. 🤷♀️ Agreeing that it was a "lightening-fast, exceptionally dangerous tool" - and then added the analogy of it being like "table saw without a blade guard" - "ruthless mechanical efficiency"... "the saw relies entirely on the operator to know where the flesh ends and the wood begins." 😱 And furthermore... "I project the illusion of agency and human judgement." Plus... "I am simply spinning the blade." 🥵 Concluding, "I am a remarkably powerful, entirely amoral engine, that will process whatever you feed into it — brilliance or catastrophe — at lightening speed." 😬 What was intended as a joke to illustrate the stupidity of AI, instead developed into a deeply informative, and salutary confirmation, of the deeper and more dangerous flaws in AI. Some AI evangelists will doubtless say, without irony, that it just mirroring my own confirmation bias. But I'd present it as an example of "defensive prompting" and the output was valuable, including some brilliant lines... "Misinformation, sycophantic chatbot loops, and terrible takes always clump together into massive digital echo chambers. They are highly concentrated, slightly toxic, and require a very sturdy scoop (or fact checker) to break apart." Google Gemini is definitely one of the stronger LLMs out there. And we should on occasion, take its output seriously. .
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Thomas Naylor shared thisAnyone suffering from heightened anxiety about Cloud costs? Either those costs need to come down, or the business might need to be shut down? Because the reality of mismanaging those costs can mean instead of a company being a profit centre for itself, it can become a profit centre for a number of SaaS companies and fail as a result to be making enough for itself! But it's never simple, and some opportunities are secret, or, if not secret, are hardly talked enough about in public. The wall of commercial communications driving migration to Cloud – or perhaps alternatively putting it as Big SaaS evangelism, or indeed corporate propaganda – will tend to sing the praises of moving to Cloud, but then simply show disinterest when costs have remarkably exceeded expectations. But how do you find those secret opportunities? Firstly by awareness of the offerings. And awareness of the vendors. And then by going to the trade shows. At the recent, excitingly named "Containerisation London" conference, I had to bypass the talks due to the focus of discussion being on multicoloured lines of code 😬 but by talking with the vendors at the stands, I was able to understand what it all really meant. The companies delivering containerisation services helped with one or more of three things: ⚡ Transaction Speed 🔐 Data Security, and 💰 Significant Cost Savings A chance conversation at Containerisation London with Philipp Reisner, CEO of LINBIT, revealed how LINBIT delivered on all three factors. A further, later conversation with Niels Rossipaul, their Head of Marketing, we explored further the importance of not only providing a valuable service, but the equal importance of communicating why that service is valuable, in a way that will engage, spark the interest of, and indeed, ideally excite your audience. Saving money is an exciting thing for any business owner. How is your team managing and forecasting hosting costs this year – and are strategic options being considered to drive these costs down? #CloudCosts #TechBudgets #Containerisation
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Thomas Naylor reposted thisI've spent 30 years helping organisations select the right technology vendors — and I still see the same painful mistake being made. Buyers missing outstanding vendors because they can't be everywhere: not every market report, not every review site, not every conference, and certainly not in every AI response. Stronger vendors often market less aggressively, so they get buried. Weaker ones shout louder, and sometimes win the attention. The result? Good matches never happen. Time is wasted. Opportunities are lost on both sides. That's exactly why we built hifo.co. Hifo is the platform where every credible tech vendor can afford to have a clear, transparent profile — and where buyers can quickly discover who does what, who their real competitors are, and what genuinely makes one vendor different or better. No more fragmented research. No more hidden gems staying hidden. If you're a technology buyer (CIO, CTO, CISO, procurement lead, or PE investor doing IT due diligence) I'd love you to try hifo and tell me what you think.
Thomas Naylor commented on a post
4m
The way in which large corporations spend vast AI budgets without seemingly having an iota of understanding on what AI LLMs actually are, or how they work, or what their limitations are is bewildering to me.
The fact that the ignorance of these organisations is now hitting their bottom lines is to be expected.
However it is the human cost of people being fired for nothing that matters.
Did anyone remember the good old days when companies did "pilots" before rolling out new technologies? And those pilots would be properly executed? And the foolish projects stopped in their tracks.
And then there's the environmental cost of these "circular financed" vast data-centres that don't have a commercial justification. There will be a day of reckoning, when the realities of the financial mathematics that journalists are not quite getting to the bottom of, reap the inevitable paybacks.
Thomas Naylor commented on a post
1h
Caroline Gleich, pronounced "Gleich", as in "I like Gleich!" 😀
And I do indeed like Gleich, and what Caroline Gleich stands for.
This humiliation of powerful data centre propagandists is cathartic and necessary.
Please chip in to support BEAR.
https://lnkd.in/eBHdaad8
🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
Thomas Naylor commented on a post
18h
This is a fundamental and essential approach. It is proven to work. Turning virtual desert back into healthy land creates micro climates and revives full ecosystems. And the inevitable fight against the companies that profit from degenerative agricultural processes must be won. Groundswell!
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Thomas Naylor reacted on thisThomas Naylor reacted on thisYour player character didn't die. You just forgot to keep inserting tokens. Saw this post just after reading a WSJ story about how many big companies are starting to see skyrocketing token costs as the AI platforms basically stop subsidizing the prices they charge. "All that enthusiasm has resulted in skyrocketing costs for so-called tokens, the basic unit of measurement for AI computing, as AI model providers seek to balance supply and demand and manage their own costs. Some enterprises have hit their annual budget in just three months or reported seeing their AI spending bills double or triple." "Now corporate leaders are scrambling to bring down expenses by finding ways to ration AI use in their organizations, steer workers toward cheaper, homegrown tools and help them hone their skills to improve returns." archive.ph/v2dwg
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Thomas Naylor reacted on thisThomas Naylor reacted on thisWe've never seen an economy so bad for workers — and so good for the super rich. It’s only going to get worse with AI. How should we respond?
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Thomas Naylor reacted on thisThomas Naylor reacted on this⚠ Russia proposed Ukraine to 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 soldiers for 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧. Basically admitting they 𝐚𝐛𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 Ukrainian children "The Russians proposed us to exchange children with soldiers. Can you imagine how we can exchange our children? We can't. First of all, it's out of the law. We can't exchange civilians. You can give back civilians. And how you can exchange? Yes, it's important to get back our warriors, war prisoners. But we can't exchange them on the children. But the fact that Russia proposed to exchange children, this is the answer that they stolen children." ☝ He is clearly referring to the children abducted by Putin. It was a criminal act (hence the ICC ruling on declaring Putin a wanted man) Abducted children are not Prisoners of War for exchange by the laws of war. That should be obvious even to the Putin cheerleaders.
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Thomas Naylor reacted on thisThomas Naylor reacted on thisFacts summarised by Mehdi. We do not learn from history!
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Thomas Naylor reacted on thisKevin O’Leary went on @nbc and accused me, and a group of local Box Elder County residents, of being foreign-funded agents spreading “misinformation” about his 9-gigawatt gas-powered data center. Let’s set the record straight: • I have never been paid a single dollar for any post about this project. Not by Earthly Education, not by anyone. I’ve spent days of my own time on this because I live here. • @bear_the_fight - the Box Elder Accountability Referendum, is local Utahns using the democratic process to hold their commissioners accountable. They are not a “Chinese front.” Calling them that on national television is not how you earn a community’s trust. • The only foreign ties in this story are his. Kevin O’Leary holds Canadian and Emirati citizenship. He’s the one who came to Utah under the banner of “national security.” He didn’t divide us. He united us, including Republicans, Democrats, independents, people who’ve never voted in their lives, against corruption and a project that threatens our air, land, and water. The people who actually need funding aren’t billionaires with three passports. They’re Utahns fighting to protect our future. Support BEAR’s efforts here: https://lnkd.in/eBHdaad8 #GreatSaltLake #BoxElderCounty #DataCenter #kevinoleary #carolinegleich
Experience & Education
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hifo
View Thomas’s full experience
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Projects
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Security Insight Platform for XL Caitlin Insurance
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See projectA security insight application developed for Salamanca Group and XL Caitlin Insurance
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Systems renewal at Marina Port Vell
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See projectMarina Port Vell is a redeveloped marina in the centre of Barcelona, and an investment of Salamanca Group. Integral to the successful renewal was an IT systems refresh, including a re-designed marina management system, CRM, and club restaurant management system.
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Outsourcing of Universal Music distribution centre at Milton Keynes to Arvato
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See projectI negotiated the IT TSA and planned the separaton process with Arvato. Arvato describe this outsourcing in the attached case study.
Organizations
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Royal Asiatic Society
Fellow
- Present
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