Friends,

Your weekly AI briefing is here: designed to help you respond to AI, not react to the noise. No curveballs. No chaos. Just clarity.

First a quick note on my availability this autumn:

Now accepting AI strategy workshops for Q3/Q4 2025

Owning Your AI: Building Alignment Through Your Tech Stack - I’m delivering 90-minute executive sessions for senior teams on designing and implementing an AI Operating System, including governance, adoption, and alignment frameworks. Available across the UK, Europe, and globally, in person or virtually.

To book for your board, team away day, or keynote event, fill in this form.

Friends,

Your weekly AI briefing is here—designed to help you respond to AI, not react to the hype.
No curveballs. No chaos. Just clarity.

First a quick note on my availability this autumn:

Now accepting AI strategy workshops for Q3/Q4 2025

Owning Your AI: Building Alignment Through Your Tech Stack - I’m delivering 90-minute executive sessions for senior teams on designing and implementing an AI Operating System, including governance, adoption, and alignment frameworks. Available across the UK, Europe, and globally, in person or virtually.

To book for your board, team away day, or keynote event, fill in this form.

This was the week when:

• 🍏 Apple launched FastVLM-0.5B, showing that small, efficient models can punch far above their weight.

• 🌱 Sustainability became a talking point in AI: Frugal AI is gaining traction as a counter-narrative to “bigger is always better.”

• 🚀 New biotech unicorns are fusing AI + nature to mine medicine from the natural world (Bloomberg).

👉 Forward this to someone who needs the signal.

🔥 URGENT PRIORITIES

✅ Systems stable
✅ No fires to fight
✅ Roadmap on track

Enjoy the clarity. It’s a gift.

📊 STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS

The signal this week: Could Frugal AI play into your AI strategy?

That means:

• New upside: custom IP, differentiated capabilities, competitive moat.

• New responsibilities: training, governance, ethics, and culture.

As an SME, you need to:

• Prepare your people to own AI systems - not just plug them in.

• Invest in Frugal AI approaches - smaller models can deliver outsized ROI without heavy infra costs.

• Rethink sustainability - AI can be efficient and responsible at the same time.🤓 

😎 GEEK OUT

1. I vibe-coded an AI system to write

   
   A coder built a workflow where AI wrote and rewrote itself into a functioning system. Strange, scrappy, but it worked — and opened up new creative territory.

👉 Read the story

Why it matters: SMEs can experiment with lightweight automation now. Tinker with small systems to uncover new efficiencies, or encourage staff to build bottom-up solutions that spark competitive advantage.

2. A simple prompt for storytelling

   
   AI Night School released a free prompt that helps you structure decks around story, not just slides. Outcome: sharper messages, stronger narratives, more persuasive communication.

👉 Try the prompt

Why it matters: Leadership is becoming about prompting. Use this in your next client or board deck to speed up creation and improve clarity — and start embedding prompts into workflows for consistency.

3. Frugal AI goes mainstream

   
   Apple’s FastVLM-0.5B shows that smaller, cheaper models can still punch above their weight. Less infrastructure, lower energy, and still high performance.

👉 Read the deep dive

Why it matters: SMEs can win by being efficient. Assess where lean AI tools could deliver value without heavy infra costs — and make sustainability part of your customer story.

4. AI + Nature = Medicine
   Biotech’s latest unicorn is using AI to mine nature’s “medicine chest.” A new wave of algorithmic innovation that could change how drugs are discovered.

👉 Read the story

Why it matters: This shows AI is tackling big problems, not just productivity hacks. As an SME, look for adjacent industries where AI is moving fast — inspiration and partnerships often cross boundaries.

🎨 WEEKEND PLAYGROUND

Try: Your phone’s intelligence. (Apple, Android, or whatever you use…)

How does it provide you AI?

• What’s improved?

• What’s the same?

• What’s annoying?

• What’s unexpectedly cool?

👉 Share your thoughts on LinkedIn — I’ll collate the best into a future issue.

📢 SHARE THE OPTIMISM

If The AI Optimist helps you think more clearly, forward it to someone else navigating the shift.

If it’s not quite landing, hit reply and let me know - I read every message.

Stay strategic, stay generous - and enjoy the sun (and rain).

Hugo & Ben