Engineering
Can we make it work?
Build, check and deliver something reliable. Gradually automate the repeated work of getting an idea into use.
From your first AI project to organisations that learn
What will you cultivate?
Start by making something useful with AI. Learn to delegate the work, improve the product, and grow organisations that can discover what is worth doing.
Cultivate is a guide and a research programme for that journey. You can begin with a small project and a little Git, while thinking much further ahead.
Two things can grow
More work delegated. A wider world to cultivate.
Change either choice to explore a possible brief. You can think about a large system while using AI for a small task, or automate much of a small project.
A practical place to start
“Add an undo button to my prototype.”
- The work you delegate
- The agent changes the code and explains how to try it.
- Your attention goes to
- Choose the change and check it yourself.
These are examples to explore, including proposals for future systems. See what the project has evidence for so far.
One example, an expanding ambition
Begin with a better feed. Follow the questions it opens.
Imagine a tool that hides unwanted posts but sometimes hides something useful. First you ask an agent for an undo button. Later you ask which change would improve the experience. Eventually you can compare whole teams and the ways they investigate that question.
A small browser extension gives us somewhere to learn. The same questions can grow to encompass services, research programmes and organisations pursuing shared missions.
Follow the worked exampleThree questions travel with you
Product
Does it help?
Find out what people need, try alternatives and use the results to decide what deserves more effort.
Organisation
Can we work better together?
Experiment with roles, collaboration, resources and decision-making. Keep what the attempts teach you.
You can improve any of these from the beginning. They develop together at different speeds.