Field Notes

Intelligence Inside

Michael Kantrow · May 26, 2026

I keep having the same conversation in boardrooms, on Zooms. Over cocktails.

Smart executives, well-resourced teams, trusted colleagues, treating AI like a software rollout. Pilot it. License it. Train people on it. Move on.

That isn't what's happening.

So I went back.

Cognition is inside the work itself now: not a tool added to it, but the substrate the work is being made of.

Back to the lesson of Intel Inside, and what a component company's transformation of an industry teaches about this one.

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