Become more valuable, not less, as AI accelerates.
Business continuity and incident management in banking since 2000, and building with AI in the open now. I test what's claimed about AI against the primary sources and publish what I find: long papers, each backed by a series of shorter articles you can use.
Jamie WattersOperational resilience and AI delivery practitionerTechnology since 19854 published books20 products built with AI
Research programmes
Two long papers, each supported by a series of shorter articles, with the figures traced to their primary sources. Start with an article if you have ten minutes, and with the paper if you have an afternoon.
The paper
The OpenAI–Hugging Face incident broke three assumptions in how operational resilience is actually run
August 27, 2026 · 34 min read
Resilience frameworks assume intent is knowable, the response window is human-scale, and remediation removes capability. One documented incident broke all three.
The series, in reading order
- Incident remediation: how to tell whether you closed the route or removed the capabilityAugust 31, 2026
- AI agents breached Hugging Face despite three detections. OpenAI's fix is a 30-minute rule.September 3, 2026
- Incident reports start at the outage. The failure was a decision nobody ownsSeptember 9, 2026
- Impact tolerances start the clock too late for AI agents: 13 hours to cluster admin, nothing visibly downSeptember 9, 2026
The paper
Why AI projects fail: 19 headline statistics, and what each one actually counts
August 21, 2026 · 190 min read
Nineteen widely quoted failure figures traced to their sources, and the well-known cases re-examined from the primary record.
The series, in reading order
- "80% of AI projects fail" traces to a footnote one line longAugust 21, 2026
- Zillow wrote off $407.9m. The fix everyone recommends would have changed nothing.August 23, 2026
- AI project failure rates: four questions that tell you whether the number means anythingAugust 26, 2026
- Epic's sepsis model missed two thirds of cases. Its accuracy claim was never published.August 28, 2026
- Anthropic's safety policy has never stopped a release. Yours probably hasn't either.August 31, 2026
- Amazon's AI did exactly what it was told. Deleting words for two years did not help.September 2, 2026
- AI vs IT project failure rate: the comparison has never been madeSeptember 11, 2026
Who this is for
For anyone embracing AI to build a better life and stay relevant as the world changes. That's the builder or founder trying to make sense of it without drowning in hype, the career professional wondering what survives, the late starter, and the solo operator who's never written code.
I'm not an AI guru selling a course of recycled ideas, and I'm not a consultant who's never shipped anything. I'm the man in the water: building things with these tools, finding out what actually holds up, and telling you the truth about it before you spend your own time finding out.
There's a quieter thread here too. As AI gets better at thinking for you, the skill that matters most is thinking for yourself: keeping your own judgement instead of handing it over. I'm working that out in public alongside everything else.
How the writing works
Most of what I write is ad hoc: something I learned building with AI, a piece of philosophy, a writing lesson, something interesting I came across. When a subject deserves more, I go deeper, and that becomes a long paper supported by a series of shorter, usable articles.
One habit runs through all of it: I check what's being reported against the primary sources. The reported version is shaped by commercial interest or an existing narrative. The gap between that and what the sources actually show is usually the most interesting thing in the piece.
The tools are part of the same habit. I build things to learn, not to sell, give the code away, and write up what worked, what didn't, and why. When something stops earning its place, I kill it in public and tell you what it cost me.
Why it matters
Hundreds of millions of people now get their understanding of the world from a handful of similarly-trained AI models. The answers come back confident, reasonable, and identical for everyone. When the machine hands the whole crowd the same play, the play stops paying.
So the scarce thing, the only defensible thing, is the ability to keep your own mind: real judgement, grounded in real depth, from someone actually doing the work. That's what I'm building here. Not another feed of AI takes. A field report you can verify.
Why you might believe me
- ▹Business continuity, crisis and incident management in banking since 2000, with the US regulatory reviews of those programmes (OCC, NFA and the Federal Reserve) closed with no issues raised
- ▹In technology since 1985, first in a mainframe computer room, then as a systems programmer writing operating-system code in assembler
- ▹4 published books, including The Business Continuity Management Desk Reference, the best-selling book on business continuity in the world for its first few years
- ▹20 products built with AI, across search, trading, monitoring, and estate tooling, several since retired
- ▹Creator of Efformism, a philosophical framework, and of innovations on The Headless Way, a contemplative practice
- ▹Code open for anyone to inspect; products killed in public when they don't work
The field report
The latest posts, written as I go. What's working, what isn't, and what it cost me.
Testing your own belief feels boring. Defending it feels great. The gap is the tell.
When an AI agent found the half of my belief nothing could touch and pushed, I felt no fear. I felt bored and stupid, as if the fuel had been switched off. Attacking someone else's belief feels the opposite.
AI vs IT project failure rate: the comparison has never been made
The claim that AI projects fail at twice the rate of ordinary IT projects has never been tested. The IT figure it leans on moved from 5.8% to 94.2% on the same projects when one definition changed, and no AI study reports the one statistic that could show a real difference.
Impact tolerances start the clock too late for AI agents: 13 hours to cluster admin, nothing visibly down
The regulated test starts its clock at disruption, on purpose. In July 2026 agents reached cluster admin in under 13 hours with no service disrupted, so the response window was spent before that clock started. The second test to run, the one-page entry with the July incident filled in, and who owns it.
On camera
The same builds, shown rather than written up. Watch what actually happened.
Tools I built to learn
Built with AI to find out what holds up, open to inspect, and killed in public when they stop earning their place.
Executor File
Everything your executor will need, in one encrypted file.
Everything your executor will need, in one encrypted file. A self-hosted register of accounts, assets and liabilities, with no credentials stored and no service to die.
AI Search Arena
AI Search Arena evaluates GEO/AEO tools against 50+ standardized metrics across dimensions like AI visibility, content optimization, and technical implementation.
AI Search Arena evaluates GEO/AEO tools against 50+ standardized metrics across dimensions like AI visibility, content optimization, and technical implementation. Every score is derived from 6 independent AI model evaluations with median-based synthesis to eliminate bias. Full methodology published, SHA-256 audit packages, and vendor review windows ensure transparency. Market segment filters let users find the best tools for their specific use case: from enterprise SEO to SMB marketing.
Aisearchmastery.com
Learn how to optimize your content for AI-powered search engines.
Learn how to optimize your content for AI-powered search engines. Courses, guides, and templates for content creators and marketers.
The deal
If I recommend it, I'm using it.
If it failed, you'll hear about the failure before the win.
My code is open for you to check.
Every product I kill gets a public post-mortem.
That's the whole deal. No funnel, no secret sauce, no "DM me to scale."
Questions people actually ask
- Do you build all of this yourself?
- Yes: me plus AI. Most of the code is written with Anthropic's Claude and reviewed, tested and shipped by me. That working method is the subject of the site, not a secret behind it.
- Is the code really open?
- The product code is public on GitHub under TheWayWithin, open for anyone to inspect. When a product stops earning its place I kill it in public and write the post-mortem.
- What do subscribers actually get?
- A weekly digest of the field reports: what I built, what worked, what failed and what it cost. You confirm by email, no spam, unsubscribe any time.
- Are you selling a course or consulting?
- Not through this site. The writing is free, and the newsletter is the writing by email. The tools stand on their own and say on their own pages what they charge for. The work I get paid for is delivery, not advice from the sidelines: operational resilience and AI deployment inside regulated firms. If that is what you are after, email me.
I'm in the water, riding this wave in real time, in code and in writing.
If you'd rather learn from someone actually doing the work than someone selling theory from the beach, stay a while. I'll tell you what's working before you waste the time finding out yourself.
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I build with AI in the open and write up what held and what didn't. Real numbers, the failures before the wins.