Your team has AI. Is it making their judgment better or quietly worse?
I am a human-systems strategist. For 30 years I have studied how people and the systems they work with interact. I help leaders design, on purpose, how their people think and work with AI, so the rollout builds capability instead of eroding it.
Not as a tool to adopt. As a discipline to practice.
For 30 years I have studied one question: how do people and the systems they work with actually interact? I have asked it on factory floors, in hospitals, in control rooms, and in boardrooms, across manufacturing, healthcare, oil and gas, automotive, transportation, and construction. The discipline behind that question is human factors, now consolidating professionally under human systems integration.
Today the most urgent version of that question is AI. Leaders have rolled it out across their teams and cannot yet tell whether it is strengthening their people's judgment or quietly degrading it. Output is up. Whether thinking is up is a different question, and almost nobody is measuring it. That is where I work.
Deliberate Intelligence
The method behind the work. Deliberate Intelligence maps the five mechanisms that decide whether an AI rollout builds capability or erodes it: automation bias, cognitive load, dual-process thinking, AI maturity at the human layer, and skill degradation. Not faster automation. Sharper decisions. Cognitive Integration is the state the method manages: AI is already part of how your people think; the question is whether that integration is functional or pathological. Everyone has AI. Not everyone thinks with it.
Learn moreSpeaking
From ergonomics conferences to startup pitch stages to university lecture halls. Two decades on stages talking about how humans interact with systems. Now the system is AI.
See topicsWriting
What I see in the field, what the research actually says, and what the mountain teaches you about performance under pressure. No hot takes. No tool roundups.
Read recent postsThinking out loud, in public. One letter every two weeks under D. Darren MacDonald: what AI is actually doing to human judgment at work.
May 22, 2026
I Found a Speech I Gave 30 Years Ago. I'm Still Giving It.
Thirty years ago I gave my student convocation address at Dalhousie. Reading it now, the instincts in it are ones I still recognize.
March 30, 2026
The Saturday Debrief: Volume 3
Field notes on a post that hit 53,000 impressions with no framework or credentials, and what that says about leading with recognition before research.
March 24, 2026
The Invisible Erosion
How AI is quietly replacing the judgment we can't afford to lose.
One conversation can change how your team thinks.
The Advisory Call is 90 minutes with me. One problem, one framework, a clear path forward. CA$297.