Writing
Writing
Doug Liles writes essays on applied AI, govtech, AI agents, and special-district governance. New pieces are published here first, then syndicated to Medium — the archive below indexes both.
Essays & answer guides
Essays and plain-language answers on applied AI, AI agents, and the public sector — published here on dougliles.com.
Essay
Stop Building for Clicks. Build What AI Agents Will Pay For.
The internet is shifting from pages people visit to resources AI agents use. A founder's guide to agent-ready data, capabilities, and paid machine-to-machine requests.
Read the guide →Answer guide
What is a Forward Deployed Engineer, and why does a district need one?
A forward deployed engineer builds working software inside your organization, on your systems — not a recommendation about it. What the role is, how it differs from a consultant or a solutions engineer, and what a special district should look for.
Read the guide →Essay
The real AI risk isn’t hallucination — it’s quiet compliance
Hallucination is loud and you catch it. The costlier failure is an AI agent that says yes, executes cleanly, and walks you off course. A field note on guardrails that survive your own impatience.
Read the guide →Answer guide
Public Comment on Florida's Mitigation Banking Rules
Public comments urging Florida DEP to require site-specific ecological and hydrological findings before mitigation-bank credits replace wetland functions lost in South Walton.
Read the guide →Answer guide
Can AI help with stormwater permitting and ERP Chapter 62-330 compliance?
Where AI genuinely helps with stormwater work — retention-volume estimates, Environmental Resource Permit (ERP, F.A.C. 62-330) documentation, application triage — and where a licensed engineer must still sign off.
Read the guide →Answer guide
How should a local government buy AI?
A plain-language AI procurement guide for special districts and local governments — what to require (auditability, data ownership, exit), how to pilot, and the questions to ask any vendor.
Read the guide →Answer guide
How can a special district adopt AI responsibly?
A practical, auditable path for special districts and local governments to adopt AI — start narrow, keep humans in the loop, log everything, and clear public-records and procurement rules first.
Read the guide →Answer guide
What is auditable AI — and why does public-sector AI need it?
Auditable AI is AI whose inputs, logic, and outputs can be inspected, explained, and checked after the fact. Why government and nonprofit AI needs it — and the minimum to get there.
Read the guide →Essay
Beyond the Hype: A Field Guide to AI for Special Districts
A governance-first playbook for district leaders separating real AI value from vendor hype — the board policy that comes before any purchase, the five uses that actually earn their keep, and the contract terms standard procurement templates miss.
Read the guide →Essay
From Tools to Teammates: A Primer on Autonomous AI Agents
What separates an autonomous AI agent from a narrow tool — the anatomy of delegated authority, the lethal trifecta, the resilience gap between safe and secure, and why AIUC-1 is the forward-looking standard enterprises are moving toward.
Read the guide →Essay
Why Do Enterprise AI Agents Fail?
Enterprise AI agents rarely fail because the model was too weak. They fail on infrastructure — the canonical truth problem, decision reasoning that was never captured, and institutional memory that lives in Slack threads and departed employees.
Read the guide →
Essays
The 7 most recent, newest first. Each opens the full piece on Medium.
March 27, 2026
Google TurboQuant Compresses AI Inference Memory by 6x With Near-Zero Accuracy Loss
A new quantization method cuts LLM inference memory roughly 6x with negligible accuracy loss — and why efficient algorithms may matter more than the biggest data centers.
Read on Medium →January 28, 2026
Free Google AI Courses: 7 Essential Modules to UpSkill with Generative AI
Seven free Google modules to build practical, hands-on generative-AI skills — a no-cost path to upskilling.
Read on Medium →January 3, 2026
Dear Marco Rubio, Let's Rebuild Venezuela
An open letter making the case for rebuilding Venezuela.
Read on Medium →January 3, 2026
AI Agent Workflow Orchestration
Design patterns for orchestrating reliable, multi-step AI agent workflows.
Read on Medium →December 21, 2025
4 Essential Skills for Neuromorphic Computing Careers: A Technical Guide
A technical guide to the four core skills for building a career in neuromorphic computing.
Read on Medium →September 21, 2025
Learning with AI: The Ultimate Guide to AI-Enhanced Learning
Using AI as a study partner instead of an answer machine — an AI-assisted Feynman technique, progressive dialogue, and a plan-do-check-act loop that makes the learning stick.
Read on Medium →April 30, 2025
Immunotherapy Breakthroughs in Pancreatic Cancer: A New Frontier
Where immunotherapy actually stands in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma — PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibition, and why the benefit so far reaches only a small, biomarker-defined group of patients.
Read on Medium →
Follow the work
I publish new essays on Medium and talk through many of them on the AI for Good podcast. For collaborations or speaking, get in touch.
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