Apple's latest UI simplification makes me feel like we're another step closer to idiocracy.
Is this to prepare for the transition to a touch-based macOS. Or because hoomans are too simple-minded to do anything but simple tasks? ("Sir, your AI CUA is here, please step away from the drop-down menu.")
OpenAI released GPT-5.4 thinking today. It has native computer use capabilities and scored 75% on the OSWorld benchmark. The median human is 72.4%.
Introducing: the "Cognitive Stack".
Whenever you think about how AI impacts work, be specific about which part of the stack you're talking about.
citrix.com/blogs/2026/02/25/understanding-the-cognitive-stack-why-your-ai-strategy-is-focused-on-the-wrong-layer/
Why? Because books, newsletters, and blogs are packaging formats for human consumption. A structured, queryable knowledge repo is the native format for AI-augmented consumption.
If I started the BrianMadden site today instead of 2003, it would be a GitHub repo.
I published and open sourced my second brain as an open-source knowledge module any AI can load.
No chatbot. No website to read. Your AI connects via MCP and reasons with all my articles, frameworks, and current thinking on workplace AI.
brianmadden.ai
Your CEO just sent the company-wide "We're now AI-first" memo. Now what?
Trying to figure out "where to apply AI", or "what's our AI strategy?" is the wrong question. The right question is: "What will we do when the things we value in system change?"
www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...
The first slides I have on this are from BriForum 2012, but I think I first spoke about it in 2010, I just don’t have the slides from back that far.
Hey thanks! I’m super happy we can still both be doing this decades later and that many more interesting days lie ahead! Cheers! 🍻
In 2025, work no longer lives in a fixed location—it emerges dynamically, wherever a worker connects to a workspace.
www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...
What does "AI" mean at Citrix?
When we talk about AI, we're probably talking about one of these three things:
1. AI in our products
2. AI we use internally
3. AI shaping our customers’ workplaces
Details are in my latest blog post:
www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...
Shopify CEO’s leaked memo is brutal—and brilliant.
Meetings, Slack, tools… all friction. It’s a manifesto for the real future of work:
AI-augmented workers cutting through the noise from the bottom up. Not someday. Now.
Execs everywhere are feeling this.
A good topic for the next blog post! In the context of today's post, a baseline use is leveraging Citrix's existing products to provide the same guardrails for future human/AI workers & automations as they do for purely human workers today.
Your workers didn't wait for your permission before bringing AI into your org. Now what do you do about it?
www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...
Shawn Bass and me on stage at Citrix UNITE 2025 in New Orleans. This photo is from the keynote where Shawn's welcoming me on stage for the first time as a Citrix employee.
I'm blogging again, this time from the official Citrix blog site(!) I'll be writing weekly about the future of work, AI in the workplace, the evolution of Citrix, and what I'm seeing in the industry and the inside Citrix.
First post is live about my 6 weeks at Citrix: www.citrix.com/blogs/2025/0...
I'll bet you didn't have this on your 2025 bingo card: I just joined Citrix! Details here: www.linkedin.com/posts/bmadde...
As I told Manoush on @npr.org yesterday, this last wave of tech (social media, search, etc.) helped people access information. AI instead helps people create new knowledge and ideas. That's why this moment feels so different—that’s why it matters so much. www.npr.org/2024/12/20/g...
o3 looks too expensive for most use (for now). But for work in academia, finance & many industrial problems, paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a successful answer would not be prohibitive. If it is generally reliable, o3 will have multiple use cases even before costs inevitably drop.
Bluesky can be a fraught place to post about AI but it is worth noting that the buzz over o1 (& now o3) is not “hype.” We know o1 can actually do some very hard tasks (see my post) & o3 appears to represent a big further leap.
They aren’t AGI, but will matter. www.oneusefulthing.org/p/what-just-...
INTRODUCTION Imagine an alternate universe in which people don’t have words for different forms of transportation—only the collective noun “vehicle.” They use that word to refer to cars, buses, bikes, spacecraft, and all other ways of getting from place A to place B. Conversations in this world are confusing. There are furious debates about whether or not vehicles are environmentally friendly, even though no one realizes that one side of the debate is talking about bikes and the other side is talking about trucks. There is a breakthrough in rocketry, but the media focuses on how vehicles have gotten faster—so people call their car dealer (oops, vehicle dealer) to ask when faster models will be available. Meanwhile, fraudsters have capitalized on the fact that consumers don’t know what to believe when it comes to vehicle technology, so scams are rampant in the vehicle sector. Now replace the word “vehicle” with “artificial intelligence,” and we have a pretty good description of the
AI Snake Oil is out today! The book has been five years in the making. The first chapter is online. It is 30 pages long and summarizes the book’s main arguments. We're grateful for all the early interest and support. Let us know what you think of the book! www.aisnakeoil.com/p/starting-r...
It's that time of year when I'm reminded of the earliest #Citrix page on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, complete with all the modern flavor that a website from 1996 can pack in, like animated snowflakes, an animated snowman, and a visitor counter: web.archive.org/web/19961221...
If you read nothing else about AI this week, read this - absolutely fascinating, ties together a whole bunch of recent developments in the field
Wrote my own notes here but really this piece defies summarization, you should absorb the whole thing simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/19/...
My AI predictions for EUC in 2025, via the "Impact of AI: Explored" podcast with @jamesoreganeuc.bsky.social & @gkunst.bsky.social.
Listen here: www.buzzsprout.com/2317233/epis...
Or watch on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJLp...
My thesis on the future of end user computing (EUC) + AI:
1. AI Agents will be the new knowledge workers
2. They will use Windows desktops
3. Those desktops will be remoted
4. This model will last longer than we think
I gave a talk about this in London last month:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFgf...
Les deux⁉️😜
I believe yes, they will be recorded. If not I’ll record it at home afterwards.
I will be giving "Part 2" of this talk tomorrow at the EUC Forum's winter meeting in London. I'll dig deeper into how AI agents will impact EUC and the workplace, and why I believe remotely-delivered Windows desktops will emerge as the enabling infrastructure for this revolution. 🔥🚀🍻
The End User Computing (EUC) community once started with the ThinList, then we moved to Twitter. It was time to move again, so we packed our bags and landed on BlueSky, if you want to find the community, here is a starter pack for you. go.bsky.app/TcjBoLJ
Planning for the next release of the #EUC #HexaGrid: The new infographic and whitepaper will be released in early 2025. 😍
If you have any suggestions, updates, or additions, feel free to DM or - ruben @ dizzion.com #TechNews #VDi #DaaS #DEX #Security #AI
My Oct 2024 keynote from EUC World: Independence, where I reminisced about the old days of EUC and how we got to where we are today, and shared my vision for the future of EUC. Hint: The AI agents will need anywhere, anytime, always-on access to Windows. 🤔
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkuo...
