The Confluence Podcast: Thoughts on the Intersection of AI, Leadership, and Communication

This week Fable comes back, and with it a set of thresholds worth naming. The U.S. government cleared Anthropic to restore its flagship model to public use, and we spend less time on the policy story than on what the model represents: capability strong enough that a client’s question about what generative AI isn’t good at left us at a loss for words, a massive overhang between what the model can d...

This week the leading labs start telling us how the rest of us will use AI. A new OpenAI paper tracks agentic coding tools spreading fast beyond engineers: active users up more than fivefold in the first half of 2026, the fastest growth outside software developers, and the median OpenAI researcher now generating fifty times the monthly output they did last November. Inside OpenAI, the tool has nea...

For three years, enterprise AI ran on a simple promise: a flat fee, use it as much as you want. This week, Microsoft quietly ended that era. Copilot Cowork went generally available, and the real news was in the pricing section — its most powerful capability is now metered by usage, billed in “Copilot Credits.” We unpack why how it’s priced may matter more than what it can do, and why token allocat...

For three days, the most capable AI model ever released to the public was sitting in our chat window. And then it was gone. On June 9, Anthropic launched Claude 5 Fable, a “Mythos-class” model that outperformed everything before it and felt less like a tool than a small studio you could hand a project and trust to deliver. Three days later, citing a U.S. government export-control order, Anthropic...

We open on a paradox at the heart of the AI coding boom. Engineers are racing to “token-maxx,” companies like Uber are burning through a full year’s AI budget in four months, yet a new NBER study of more than 100,000 developers finds the tools generate dramatically more code while barely changing how much finished software actually ships. We trace why, and where the real bottlenecks live. From the...

Hello, Opus 4.8. The helpful ghost. When AI's tells run deeper. An excellent interview on the state of enterprise AI. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s Confluence podcast highlights a significant acceleration in artificial intelligence capabilities, specifically noting that new general-purpose models are now solving complex mathematical problems and identifying security vulnerabilities that previously baffled experts. While these advancements promise a step change in performance, your AI hosts warn that unsupervised reliance on defaul...

It's not just a trend, it's a real problem. Slop is in the eye of the beholder. AI use and self confidence. The model as data hub. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Read this week’s issue : Why you shouldn't have AI record your meetings. Listening to AI discuss your work. Rising tides and one crashing wave. Claude’s Visual Tells. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Read today’s issue : Becoming an LLM whisperer. Our uncertain uncertainties. A tale of two J-curves. Looking back at our 2023 white papers. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Read this week’s edition: Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

New releases from Anthropic. Generative AI's WHELM problem. AI’s impact on legal reasoning. The rise of cognitive surrender. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Let's talk about Mythos. A closer look at how work is shifting. The other side of the Solow Paradox. Taking responsibility for what AI produces. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

The coming wave of AI constraint. Simon Willison's AI State of the Union. The Solow Paradox returns. Two recent podcasts worth a listen. Read this week’s edition . Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

The experts aren't waiting. The cost of getting faster. LLMs are changing what we mean. The transparency dilemma. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Your always-on assistant is closer than you think. Seeing the frontier, seeing the future. AI brain fry. Our values shape how we see AI. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Pay attention to Copilot. My week. New research on generative AI and cognitive load. Communications functions are at a crossroads. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Read this week’s full issue: https://craai.substack.com/p/confluence-for-3826 Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Read this week’s issue : Will change be top-down or bottom-up? A look into Copilot Studio. Anthropic’s AI fluency index. The productivity paradox, revisited. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Give your power users a platform. Mollick’s guide to which AI to use in the agentic era. Anthropic expands features for free users. Getting to know Claude. Read this week's issue. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

How to better steer your AI. The Chief Question Officer. Evaluating talent with AI. The generative AI workload trap. Read this week's edition. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.6. Claude in PowerPoint arrives. Tolerating ambiguity and working with AI. What people will let AI do. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Things just got weird. Accessing GPT-5.2 in Copilot. New Anthropic data on AI and skill development. A more nuanced look at AI exposure. Read this week's edition. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

The shifting sands of transparency about AI use. The art of the (newly) possible. The day after AGI. AI is changing speech. Read this week’s edition. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe

Claude Cowork, Claude Code, and prophecy. Another Anthropic Economic Index. AI use in the legal profession. Simple questions to get better feedback from LLMs. Get full access to Confluence: AI, Leadership, and Communication at craai.substack.com/subscribe