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Blog · 44 articles

The research, not the hype.

Grounded analysis of AI, software and the industries they're reshaping — built from real 2025 reports and studies, with every figure sourced.

Research Papers
June 27, 2026·6 min read

“Attention Is All You Need”, explained for non-engineers

The 2017 paper behind every modern AI model is famously dense. Here is what it actually proposed — and why it changed everything — in plain language, with the original linked.

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Hiring & Pricing
June 27, 2026·6 min read

How to choose a software development partner in 2026 (a buyer’s checklist)

Most software projects run over budget, and a wrong vendor choice is expensive to unwind. Here is the checklist serious buyers use before signing anything.

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Research Papers
June 26, 2026·6 min read

Chinchilla and the scaling laws: why bigger models aren’t always better

A 2022 DeepMind paper showed most large models were the wrong shape — too big, trained on too little data. It quietly reshaped how every model since has been built.

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Hiring & Pricing
June 26, 2026·6 min read

What custom software actually costs in 2026 — and why quotes vary 10×

The same project can be quoted at $40k or $400k. Here is what drives the spread, what you are really paying for, and how to compare quotes without getting burned.

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Research
June 26, 2026·6 min read

The state of enterprise AI in 2025: what the reports actually say

Stanford, McKinsey and MIT all published 2025 data on enterprise AI. Read together, they tell one story: near-universal adoption, almost no measurable return.

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Research Papers
June 25, 2026·6 min read

The paper that introduced RAG, explained simply

Retrieval-augmented generation is the most common way companies put their own data into an AI product. A 2020 paper named the idea — here is what it proposed, in plain words.

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Hiring & Pricing
June 25, 2026·6 min read

Fixed-price vs time-and-materials vs dedicated team: which engagement model fits

The contract model you pick changes who carries the risk, how fast you can adapt, and what you ultimately pay. A plain-English guide to choosing the right one.

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Research Papers
June 24, 2026·6 min read

Chain-of-thought: the paper that taught models to “show their work”

A 2022 paper found that simply asking a model to reason step by step made it dramatically better at hard problems. It is the root of today’s “reasoning” models.

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AI Strategy
June 24, 2026·6 min read

The agentic AI reality check: Gartner’s numbers cut both ways

AI agents are the headline of 2025–26. Gartner’s forecasts show explosive adoption — and a 40% project cancellation rate. Both are true.

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Research Papers
June 23, 2026·6 min read

Do “reasoning” models actually reason? What Apple’s GSM-Symbolic paper found

A 2024 Apple study probed whether top models truly reason or just pattern-match. Changing the numbers in a maths problem — or adding an irrelevant sentence — made accuracy drop.

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Hiring & Pricing
June 23, 2026·6 min read

In-house vs outsourced development: the real 2026 cost comparison

A developer’s salary is the smallest part of the bill. Once you add recruiting, ramp-up, benefits and the risk of a bad hire, the in-house-vs-partner maths shifts.

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AI Strategy
June 22, 2026·6 min read

The AI cost curve: cheap to start, expensive to keep

Inference got 280× cheaper in 18 months — so why do most AI projects lose money? The cost isn’t in starting. It’s in everything after.

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Research Papers
June 21, 2026·6 min read

The METR study, explained: why AI made experienced developers slower

A 2025 randomised trial found seasoned developers were 19% slower with AI tools — yet believed they were faster. The gap between feeling and reality is the real finding.

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Hiring & Pricing
June 21, 2026·6 min read

12 questions to ask before hiring an AI development company

95% of enterprise AI pilots show no measurable return. These are the questions that separate a partner who will ship value from one who will sell you a demo.

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Research
June 20, 2026·6 min read

Does AI actually make developers faster? What the evidence says

A randomised controlled trial found AI tools made experienced developers 19% slower — while they believed they were 20% faster. The perception gap is the real story.

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Hiring & Pricing
June 19, 2026·6 min read

Why “has worked with enterprises” should weigh heavily when you pick a vendor

A team that has delivered for Microsoft, Google or National Instruments has already survived the reviews, scale and scrutiny most projects never reach. Here is why that matters even for small projects.

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Security
June 18, 2026·6 min read

AI now powers most cyberattacks — what the 2025 data shows

AI-generated phishing converts 4.5× better than human attempts, deepfake incidents are up 680%, and most attacks now use AI. The defensive bar just moved.

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Design
June 17, 2026·6 min read

Designing trustworthy AI interfaces: what the UX research says

AI features fail less on the model and more on the interface around it. The usability research points to a few patterns that consistently earn user trust — and a few that destroy it.

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Regulation
June 16, 2026·6 min read

The EU AI Act is live: what the deadlines actually require

Prohibited-use bans and GPAI rules are already in force, with fines up to 7% of global turnover. Here’s the timeline every team shipping AI should know.

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Industry
June 14, 2026·6 min read

AI in customer service: what “65% resolved without a human” really means

AI is genuinely landing in support — measurable productivity gains and rising auto-resolution. But the gap between deploying and operationalising is wide.

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Industry
June 12, 2026·6 min read

AI in banking: $120B saved, yet only 4 of the top 50 banks see ROI

Banks adopted AI faster than almost anyone — especially for fraud. The savings are huge in aggregate, but realised ROI at the firm level is rare.

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Workplace
June 10, 2026·6 min read

What AI is doing to entry-level jobs — the early evidence

The clearest labour-market signal so far isn’t mass layoffs. It’s a quiet drop in junior hiring at firms that adopt AI. The data is nuanced.

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Research
June 8, 2026·6 min read

AI’s energy bill: the cost nobody prices into the pilot

The IEA projects AI will more than quadruple data-centre electricity demand by 2030. For builders, efficiency is now a cost discipline, not just a green one.

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Industry
June 6, 2026·6 min read

AI in healthcare by the numbers: 1,250 cleared devices and counting

Healthcare is where AI progress is easiest to count — every tool clears a regulator. The FDA list shows a 350% jump in five years, and a clear design lesson.

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AI Strategy
June 4, 2026·6 min read

Inference got 280× cheaper in 18 months. Here’s what it unlocks

The collapsing cost of running models is the most underrated story in AI. It changes which products are viable — and which moats disappear.

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Engineering
June 2, 2026·6 min read

Small language models: when smaller is smarter

The biggest model isn’t usually the right one. Efficiency gains mean small, specialised models now win on cost, speed, privacy — and often quality.

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Research
May 30, 2026·6 min read

AI incidents rose 56% in a year. The safety gap is widening

Capability is racing ahead of responsibility. Reported AI incidents hit a record high in 2024, even as standardised safety evaluation lags behind.

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Engineering
May 28, 2026·6 min read

RAG vs fine-tuning: which one do you actually need?

Two ways to make a model know your domain — and most teams reach for the harder one first. A practical guide to choosing.

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Engineering
May 26, 2026·6 min read

If you can’t measure it, you can’t maintain it: evals for AI features

The single discipline that separates AI pilots that reach production from the 95% that don’t is evaluation. Here’s how to build it.

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Engineering
May 24, 2026·5 min read

Why your AI agent keeps failing in production

Gartner expects 40% of agentic AI projects to be cancelled by 2027. The reasons are predictable — and avoidable.

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Security
May 22, 2026·5 min read

Prompt injection: the attack surface you ship with every AI feature

The moment your model reads untrusted input, that input can carry instructions. Why prompt injection is AI’s defining security problem.

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Design
May 20, 2026·5 min read

Designing for AI: UX when the answer isn’t certain

AI features break classic UX assumptions. Designing for probabilistic, sometimes-wrong systems takes a new set of patterns.

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Engineering
May 18, 2026·5 min read

Modernising legacy systems without the big rewrite

The full rewrite is the most expensive, riskiest path — and rarely the right one. How to modernise incrementally instead.

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AI Strategy
May 16, 2026·5 min read

Build, buy, or AI: choosing the right foundation

Off-the-shelf is the right default — until it caps your business. With AI now an option too, the framework needs an update.

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AI Strategy
May 14, 2026·5 min read

Human in the loop: the pattern behind every compliant AI system

From FDA-cleared devices to banking to the EU AI Act, the same design keeps appearing: AI assists, a human decides. It’s not a limitation — it’s the product.

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Industry
May 12, 2026·5 min read

Generative AI in banking: what actually ships past compliance

Finance has the data and the use cases — but also the regulators. Here’s where generative AI is genuinely landing.

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Industry
May 10, 2026·5 min read

AI in retail & e-commerce: personalisation past the hype

Recommendations and forecasting are now table stakes. The frontier is generative — turning data into merchandising, content and service at scale.

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Industry
May 8, 2026·5 min read

AI in manufacturing and the field: classical models still rule

Predictive maintenance and quality inspection deliver real gains — but much of it is classical machine learning, not generative AI. That’s a feature, not a gap.

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Industry
May 6, 2026·5 min read

AI in education: adaptive learning and the data question

AI can personalise learning at a scale teachers never could — but student data and academic integrity set hard boundaries.

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Industry
May 4, 2026·5 min read

AI in legal: review at machine speed, judgment at human pace

Document review, research and drafting are being transformed. But hallucinated citations and privilege make accountability the deciding constraint.

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Engineering
May 2, 2026·5 min read

Open-weight vs closed models: a decision, not a religion

The gap between open and closed models has narrowed sharply. The right choice is about control, cost and data — not ideology.

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Industry
April 30, 2026·5 min read

Can AI fix the energy problem it creates?

AI is set to surge electricity demand — but the IEA argues it could also become one of the grid’s most powerful optimisation tools. Both futures are open.

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Research
April 28, 2026·5 min read

Why 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail — and what the 5% do differently

MIT studied 300 deployments and surveyed hundreds of leaders. The 95% failure rate isn’t about model quality — it’s about how organisations adopt.

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AI Strategy
April 25, 2026·5 min read

How to measure AI ROI when the reports say most can’t

Only 39% of firms see any EBIT impact from AI, and just 4 of the top 50 banks reported realised ROI. Measuring return is the skill that separates winners.

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