The Middle Distance

A thinking space for leaders navigating the distance between what they read about AI and what they actually deal with every day.

The AI conversation is happening in the wrong rooms. The Middle Distance sits in the gap between the breathless forecast and the daily reality of running complex, regulated organisations.

Silicon Valley · 2026
$700B
AI datacenter spending this year alone
Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Oracle

"AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10-20% within five years."

— Dario Amodei, CEO Anthropic · 2025

"xAI's Colossus: 2 gigawatts. 555,000 GPUs. Next step — orbiting data centers via SpaceX."

— Elon Musk, xAI / SpaceX · Dec 2025

"AI is starting to act like a junior employee. Assign it work, check quality, give feedback."

— Sam Altman, CEO OpenAI

GAP
Operations Director · Monday 08:14
urgent Engineering changed the BOM on Friday. Production found out this morning. Line stopped.
waiting Change approval takes 6 weeks. Customer wants delivery in 4.
ongoing 3 departments. 4 Excel files. Nobody knows which one is current.
ongoing ERP implementation stalled. 18 months in. Still not live.
blocked IT blocked ChatGPT, Copilot, and Claude. Security policy. No exceptions.
irony We do have an internal AI tool. It corrects spelling in emails.

"Orbiting data centers? I can't get my PLM to talk to my ERP."

— Hears the news. Laughs. Goes back to the fire.

The Middle Distance middledistance.ai

We've spent years working inside organisations that look like the right column — and we build with the tools and models coming out of the left. That position gives us a particular view of the gap. This is where we think through what it actually means, without predictions, without hype.

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