Directive Blogs

I should probably not be the guy writing this. I run an IT and cybersecurity company that sells AI services. I run a marketing agency. I just finished writing a book about small businesses using AI, and I'm in the middle of editing it. I have told more business owners than I can count to stop being scared of this stuff and go use it.

So it's a little awkward to admit that lately, AI is in my way.

Read that headline again. Now sit with it for a second.

OpenAI runs an internal benchmark called ExploitGym. It exists to answer one question: how far can our models actually push offensive hacking skills? And to get an honest answer, they did something deliberate. They turned off the classifiers that normally block high-risk cyber behavior on two models. The publicly released GPT-5.6 Sol, and an unreleased model that's reportedly even more capable. On purpose. They wanted the real number, not the polite one.

I was 13 years old, making my friends re-enact The Breakfast Club in my living room.

I was the director. I gave notes. I made people do scenes over. I had a vision. I had my dad's old video camera, no crew, no budget, and absolutely no business calling myself a director. But that's what I was doing, and I loved every second of it. To this day, I have no idea how I convinced a group of teenagers to spend their Saturday afternoon taking direction from me in my living room. Whatever I said, it worked. They showed up. They hit their marks. I still don't know how.

The emergence of Artificial Intelligence as a ubiquitous productivity tool marks a profound inflection point in the human story that parallels that of the printing press. For centuries, progress was measured by what could be created with hands and how they used the tools at their disposal. What’s changed is that we have now entered an era where the tool itself begins to think, synthesize, and create for itself. This shift represents more than just a technological upgrade; it is a fundamental reconfiguration of how we work. This month, we wanted to take a long look at the benefits AI is bringing humanity.

As an IT service provider, our techs spend their days at the intersection of cutting-edge and business-critical. In 2026, the conversation about each has shifted. It is no longer about whether you should use AI, because everyone is, but about the risks of trusting it blindly.

We have seen it firsthand: companies that treat AI like a set-it-and-forget-it solution often end up calling us for emergency damage control. Here are the major pitfalls of over-trusting AI and how to keep your business from becoming a cautionary tale.

With AI now being used by adversaries to reverse-engineer patches and generate exploits in hours rather than weeks, our old Patch Tuesday rhythm is essentially an open invitation to hackers. The truth is, the patching gap is a competitive weakness.

If we want to protect our organizations without drowning our teams in manual toil, we have to stop treating patching as a checklist and start treating it as a dynamic, intelligent discipline. Here is how we’re rethinking the vulnerability situation.

Quantifying the impact of AI on employment is notoriously difficult because technology rarely replaces a job in its entirety. Instead, it tends to disassemble a role into its component tasks. While AI is exceptionally efficient at handling repetitive, data-heavy, or predictable processes, it struggles with the high-level reasoning and interpersonal nuances that define many professions.

Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days. In fact, most businesses are using it for a multitude of things. With everyone all-aboard the AI train, it’s easy to confuse the computational power and speed AI offers to be infallible. Unfortunately, AI can get things going sideways if you aren’t careful. When it does go wrong, the consequences can be more than just an inconvenience.

Here's a look at some of the most critical ways AI can go wrong:

As the water cooler whispers about artificial intelligence get louder, workers are actively becoming worried about the status of their jobs. The idea of robots taking jobs can sound alarming, but knowledge is power. By understanding how AI works and what it can do for a business, employers and employees alike can gain some perspective and peace of mind. 

If you’re like most professionals today, you know that writing emails can be a surprisingly time-consuming task. You want to sound professional but not stiff, friendly but not casual, clear but not robotic. What’s more, when your inbox is already overflowing, the last thing you want is to stare at a blinking cursor trying to craft the perfect response.

Artificial intelligence is taking over enterprise computing. So much so that there is some degree of cynicism among CIOs and other technology leaders about what exactly AI can do for them. The reality is that AI can do some pretty remarkable things and is advancing pretty quickly, but if you are expecting it to transform your business with minimal effort, you might be in for a rude awakening. This month, we want to take a look at how AI is beneficial for businesses and what to expect from the technology in the near future. 

It isn’t uncommon for many people to make up an answer that they feel seems plausible if asked something they don’t have an answer to. It happens all the time.

As it turns out, this is a tendency that artificial intelligence has inherited from us.

Artificial Intelligence is one of the most disruptive and innovative technologies that has come down the line in a decade. It can do things in minutes that would take people hours or days. It will only get more sophisticated from here. Unfortunately for business owners, the use of AI can mean that sometimes you lose sight of just how valuable your human employees are. This month, we take a look at why human employees can be an important part of keeping your automated tools in check. 

The big thing in business computing is AI, or artificial intelligence, and businesses are implementing it to solve a lot of repetitive problems that free up their employees to serve other roles. One such area is for IT support. But is it worth it to chat with a robot when something as important as IT is on the line?

Would you be concerned if someone, with only an image, could infer things about you with better-than-expected accuracy? I don’t mean snippets, either—we’re talking about entire paragraphs of context.

Probably, right?

How concerned would you be if I told you that’s precisely what Google Photos does?

Artificial intelligence is the latest IT buzzword that everyone seems to focus on and it’s because it is a big deal. Advances in computing have created an environment where developers can create software that effectively learns. Unfortunately, due to the nature of AI regulation; or, the complete lack of it, there are some who are concerned that the technology—which could be a revolutionary tool for the improvement of human societies—is being degraded.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has upended the way that we discuss technology in business, society, and individual everyday life. While we mostly focus on the benefits of the technology, there are many downsides to consider as well. That’s what we’d like to discuss today; how AI has a dark side to it that potentially requires regulation.

One of the many tasks undertaken by the United Nations is to protect human rights around the globe while also working to create more sustainable and climate-friendly development. As such, the UN has recently taken a healthy interest in the development of artificial intelligence, hoping to develop guidelines that allow us to get the most value out of AI without creating more significant problems.

AI has become a major tool all throughout the modern economy. Businesses are using technology with built-in AI, and that’s because it improves operational efficiency. Let's take a look at some of the benefits small businesses can take advantage of with AI.

While AI is far from perfect, I always love discovering ways that it can help do something mundane and speed up a workflow here or there. I’m no expert in Photoshop either, so if I need to edit something, I usually depend on someone with a little more experience, but this was a really neat trick I was able to do in just a few minutes!

More small and medium-sized businesses than ever are seeing AI's potential to transform their operations. However, like any technology, AI has its own set of pros and cons. Let's discuss three major advantages and drawbacks you can expect if using it in your business. Hopefully, it helps you make an informed decision about adopting AI.

Over the past few years, artificial intelligence has become a bona fide buzzword amongst businesses of all sizes, with 97% of respondents to a Forbes survey seeing a potential benefit in some way, shape, or form. However, with it being integrated everywhere in our modern lives, it is important that we remember that AI is still a human invention, as such, it is vulnerable to our own implicit biases.

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool that can revolutionize small businesses. With its ability to analyze vast amounts of data and make intelligent decisions, AI has the potential to streamline operations, improve customer service, and drive growth. Let’s explore some practical applications of AI that can benefit small businesses and help them thrive in today's competitive landscape.

AI has been a hot topic in recent months and years, which only makes sense. Not only has it been used in more public applications, but it has also caused a bit of controversy as it seems to “compete” with people. Back in September, art made by using an artificially intelligent platform caused a stir by winning an art competition, and workplace fears of a computer taking one’s job have seemingly become more well-founded than ever.

For better or worse, the way information technology is being used has come to define the way that businesses run. The most noteworthy companies are the ones using their data to their advantage and utilizing cutting-edge tools to facilitate efficient processes and productivity while managing their costs. One technology is giving more and more organizations the freedom to accomplish their goals and automate more of their mundane processes: Artificial Intelligence

Healthcare is an industry that—quite understandably—operates under very high pressure for a significant share of the time. As a result, it is only natural to conclude that a technology that could potentially make the lives of healthcare providers and administrators easier in numerous ways shows some promise. That technology is artificial intelligence.

Let’s go over a few of the many ways that AI has been proposed (if not implemented already) as a solution to some of healthcare’s more challenging stresses.

Artificial intelligence has always been an intriguing concept, from the works of Isaac Asimov to the initial work at Dartmouth College in the 1950s. Nowadays, many of the technologies that we rely on each day incorporate some version of artificial intelligence… and more progress is made each day. Of course, for all its benefits, artificial intelligence can also create some problems for businesses.

Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm, and the advent of emerging technologies has many small businesses thinking about how they can utilize it to cut costs, improve operations, and eliminate unnecessary or repetitive tasks. Let’s take a look at three ways your business can leverage artificial intelligence to the best of its ability.

There are plenty of technologies that come to define the point of time in which they were developed. The printing press, the light bulb, the automobile, etc. Today, we live in a time where new, and potentially transcendent technologies seem to be a dime a dozen. In the past twenty years we’ve seen the development of the mobile device, broadband technology (both wired and wireless), social media, blockchain and cryptocurrency, all the way to self-driving cars. None of these technologies (even YouTube) has the promise that Artificial Intelligence has, however. Let’s take a look at how businesses are using AI to improve their business right now.

Artificial intelligence is perhaps most commonly known as a malevolent force, thanks to popular culture. HAL 9000, Ultron, and many others have reinforced that A.I. will be the downfall of humanity. In reality, however, A.I. holds more potential utility as a key implementation in your business’ network.

Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more accessible to businesses of all sizes. In fact, it is swiftly becoming apparent that businesses that aren’t actively considering how to leverage AI in their processes are doing themselves a disservice.

No security solution is perfect. Each one has its own set of pros and cons. For example, relying completely on an automated solution is thorough, but it will flag plenty of threats that aren’t really threats (aka, false positives). Meanwhile, a human overseeing security is great for spotting worrisome trends, but a human can’t possibly catch every single attack. With this dynamic in mind, a team of researchers from MIT has successfully blended the two.