Science & Technology - Dr Robert N. Winter

The Missing Middle in Enterprise AI

Most companies use AI, but few achieve real impact. In part I of this series I explore why people—not tools—determine AI maturity, and why the next serious organisations will dominate the space between pilots and profit.

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 16 Dec 2025

Geometric blocks in warm and muted tones overlay a faint architectural line drawing, characteristic of Paul Klee’s abstract style, suggesting layered structure and harmonic order.

Which Humans? Whose Values? The Cultural Biases of AI

AI models mirror WEIRD cultural norms while claiming universality. Alignment methods reinforce this bias, projecting one community’s “common sense” as global truth. Recognising plurality through Wittgenstein’s language-games and Popper’s falsification reframes alignment as provisional and adaptive,

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 5 Oct 2025

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Canaletto’s 18th-century view of Venice’s Grand Canal shows gondolas gliding past Renaissance palaces, merchants and citizens along the waterway beneath a bright blue, cloud-dappled sky.

AI Sycophants: How To Stop Your Model From Kissing Up

AI models often mirror our beliefs, rewarding us with agreeable but shallow answers. This sycophancy flatters rather than challenges, eroding judgment and candour. To gain true value, leaders must set incentives that favour truth over comfort, design prompts that demand trade-offs, and treat AI as a

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 24 Aug 2025

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A Baroque still life painting by Pieter Boel depicting a grand assortment of worldly objects—crowns, mitres, armor, musical i

No-Click Reading: How AI Summaries Starve Critical Thinking

Clicks are dying, and with them provenance, nuance, and the economics of ideas. AI digests and social updates reward skim over substance, shrinking attention to ringtone length while starving original work. I argue for friction, attribution, and long-form habits, treating summaries as aperitifs, not

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 17 Aug 2025

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s *Netherlandish Proverbs* (1559)—a wide village panorama crowded with dozens of tiny scenes illustr

The Limitations of AI in Formal Reasoning

Advances in LLMs show promise, but token bias undermines their logical reliability. Small input shifts can distort outputs, posing risks in fields like medicine, law, and policy. Their dependence on pattern recognition over true reasoning demands closer scrutiny and better design.

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 20 Oct 2024

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The image depicts an abstract, stylized human brain divided into two halves. On the left side, the brain is made up of mechan

Leading AI-First Organisations

By employing leaders capable of creating an AI framework — because they are awake and aware to the unintended effects of AI on social well-being, data integrity and privacy, diversity, and governance — organisations seeking to transform into being AI-first are well positioned to engage in trustworth

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 5 Aug 2023

Inner Circle Only

Image of lines and hexagonal blocks with the letters AI

Acting for Privacy - An Australian Story

There is the case to be made that this is not only the cost of doing business in the digital age but that, like environmental protections, there are great rewards to be reaped in improved quality of life.

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 25 Mar 2023

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Our Mind is a Blurry Image of Life

The hope is much, for having gotten this far is to be forewarned and thus forearmed. In that we do well to employ scepticism when listening to a human interlocutor. Because even the best of us are filling in the blanks in our memory.

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 18 Feb 2023

Ghost Writers: Rise of the Machines

Ultimately, I do not think the problem is that we are building machines so ‘smart’ that their output is indistinguishable from human compositions. The problem is that we are educating humans whose output is so illiterate, and devoid of experience, it is indistinguishable from computer generated text

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 4 Feb 2023

Inner Circle Only

Marginalia: Anatomy of a Search Engine

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 4 Jun 2022

Inner Circle Only

How I Write—Long Form Research

From time to time, I contemplate how I publish. Mostly because I like 'the elegance of a refined workflow'.

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 5 Feb 2022

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The Linux Paradigm

In science, a paradigm is a model or pattern — a typical instance or exemplar. But in rhetoric, my chosen field, it is an example or guide as to how one should behave.

By Dr Robert N. Winter

/ 27 Dec 2021