by John Macdonald | Feb 18, 2026 | AI, Human, Leadership, The250
Struggle first on your own. Then pull in AI. David Epstein wrote a great article about whether AI is rotting our brains, based on an MIT study. I wrote about it also. Spoiler Alert: It depends. Basically, start with yourself, rather than starting with AI. The best... by John Macdonald | Feb 17, 2026 | AI, Human, Leadership, Technology, The250
When I first started The250, my writing and publishing were 100% manual. Here’s the original workflow for The250: I’d start with a topic (or a few) that I’d been thinking about. If necessary, do some research. Open Grammarly, start writing. Iterate in Grammarly until... by John Macdonald | Feb 16, 2026 | AI, Human, Technology, The250
A former colleague of mine posted on LinkedIn that he sent 25000 prompts to AI 2025 to help him learn whether AI can help design complex ICs. Spoiler alert: Yes, of course. I estimate I’ve probably sent double or triple that many prompts over the 2.5 years I’ve been... by John Macdonald | Feb 15, 2026 | AI, Technology, The250
We hear the word agent quite a bit now with AI. Agents work on instructions. Free agents work on incentives. Let’s be clear about what kind of agents we’re talking about. Share this: Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on LinkedIn (Opens... by John Macdonald | Feb 14, 2026 | AI, Human, The250
The first modern labor unions popped up in Britain in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. They were groups of wage workers in the new factory economy bargaining collectively for better economic terms and better working conditions. They felt taken advantage... by John Macdonald | Feb 13, 2026 | AI, Human, Technology, The250
When I was a young engineer, I programmed on a test system that provided 128 lines of program space. That was it. You had 128 lines of code. Make it work. By the way, that smart light bulb that Alexa can turn on and off? That has about 25,000 lines of code. That’s...