While the public discourse remains fixated on Artificial General Intelligence, the more immediate and consequential story is the diffusion of AI into specialized enterprise domains. Having spent time as a quant within the hedge fund industry, I have long viewed financial services as the primary bellwether for how emerging technologies transition from research labs toContinue reading “What’s Emerging in Financial AI: From Foundation Models to Compliance-as-Code”
Author Archives: Ben Lorica
Emerging AI patterns in finance (what to watch in 2026)
Subscribe • Previous Issues What’s Emerging in Financial AI: From Foundation Models to Compliance-as-Code While the public discourse remains fixated on Artificial General Intelligence, the more immediate and consequential story is the diffusion of AI into specialized enterprise domains. Having spent time as a quant within the hedge fund industry, I have long viewed financial services asContinue reading “Emerging AI patterns in finance (what to watch in 2026)”
Agent Optimization: From Prompt Whispering to Platform Engineering
Agent optimization is the work of making an agent workflow dependable — despite long tool chains, multiple roles, and the inherent variability of large language models. In day-to-day engineering terms, it is closer to debugging a complex system than “making the model smarter”: you are tuning roles, prompts, routing, memory, tool use, and verification soContinue reading “Agent Optimization: From Prompt Whispering to Platform Engineering”
Agent workflows: stop guessing, start measuring
Subscribe • Previous Issues Agent Optimization: From Prompt Whispering to Platform Engineering Agent optimization is the work of making an agent workflow dependable — despite long tool chains, multiple roles, and the inherent variability of large language models. In day-to-day engineering terms, it is closer to debugging a complex system than “making the model smarter”: you areContinue reading “Agent workflows: stop guessing, start measuring”
Adapting Your Data Platform to the Agent-Native Era
As we settle into 2026, I think data engineering is being pulled in two directions at once: toward more automation(because agents are starting to do real work) and toward more scrutiny (because “close enough” stops being acceptable once software is making decisions). Real usage data backs up the intuition that workloads are becoming automated, moreContinue reading “Adapting Your Data Platform to the Agent-Native Era”
Data Engineering in 2026: What Changes?
Subscribe • Previous Issues Adapting Your Data Platform to the Agent-Native Era As we settle into 2026, I think data engineering is being pulled in two directions at once: toward more automation(because agents are starting to do real work) and toward more scrutiny (because “close enough” stops being acceptable once software is making decisions). Real usage dataContinue reading “Data Engineering in 2026: What Changes?”
The Year in Print: 12 Books That Defined 2025
To mark the season, here are twelve non-fiction selections for the twelve days of Christmas. These are books we enjoyed and found worth passing along, ranging from deep dives into semiconductor history to fresh looks at creative collaboration. Whether you need a companion for a long-haul flight, a thoughtful gift idea, or simply a quietContinue reading “The Year in Print: 12 Books That Defined 2025”
Your holiday reading list: 12 books we loved this year
Subscribe • Previous Issues The Year in Print: 12 Books That Defined 2025 To mark the season, here are twelve non-fiction selections for the twelve days of Christmas. These are books we enjoyed and found worth passing along, ranging from deep dives into semiconductor history to fresh looks at creative collaboration. Whether you need a companion forContinue reading “Your holiday reading list: 12 books we loved this year”
The World Model Minefield: A Guide for AI Teams
The term “world model” has quickly migrated from research papers to the center of the artificial intelligence conversation, frequently cited in media coverage of next-gen AI. At a high level, the concept promises AI that does not merely predict the next word in a sentence but understands the underlying physics, cause-and-effect, and spatial dynamics ofContinue reading “The World Model Minefield: A Guide for AI Teams”
“World Model” is a mess. Here’s how to make sense of it.
Subscribe • Previous Issues The World Model Minefield: A Guide for AI Teams The term “world model” has quickly migrated from research papers to the center of the artificial intelligence conversation, frequently cited in media coverage of next-gen AI. At a high level, the concept promises AI that does not merely predict the next word in aContinue reading ““World Model” is a mess. Here’s how to make sense of it.”