August 2025

Busy month, don’t know where it went. Some of it went on the following.

Asking questions

I mentioned some strategy work I’d been doing – some prodding around and various conversations basically led me to realise that we know where we want to go but are less sure of how to get there. A lot of collaborating across teams is gonna have to happen.

I’ve been fiddling around writing problem statements and making diagrams explaining these problems in a (hopefully) simple way. This sort of thing:

Next thing is to start sharing these around a bit and seeing if they’re a useful way to focus the collaborative work that needs to happen.

Does Liverpool

I’ve been coworking at Does Liverpool a couple of times this last month, mostly to get out of the house without traipsing over to Manchester. It’s a lovely place. I feel more comfortable there than at your average anaesthetised civil service office.

It was very nice to see one of Ben’s Mayku FormBoxes sat in the corner, looking a bit dusty, well-loved, but in pretty good nick nonetheless.

The Cole Palmer test

This idea was birthed at the pub, bear with.

For non-football fans, Cole Palmer is an extremely gifted young attacker who plays for Chelsea and England. He’s become moderately famous outside of football for his gormless interviews, where he seems to epitomise the stereotype of footballers being thick as shit.

He can be a bit inconsistent on the pitch but at his best he is sublime, able to see everything that’s happening in the game and make passes that no one sees coming. He has incredible awareness of space, instinct and technique.

He is a really good illustration of how intelligence comes in different forms.

So I’d like to propose a new test for human-level AGI: the Cole Palmer test. Which is basically - yeah maybe your AI is as smart as having access to an expert in every academic field all at once, but is it as smart as Cole Palmer?