The Artificially Intelligent Enterprise

01/08/2026

Yesterday, Robert Thelen unpacked when not to use LLMs — and how more specialized, ex*****on-focused AI systems are changing how real work gets done. 🧠⚙️

If you joined us for yesterday’s All Things AI Lunch & Learn, thank you for being part of the conversation.
If you missed it, you can watch the full recording here: https://cstu.io/a8f73d

That discussion continues next week!

🔔 Next Lunch & Learn (Online): Manus AI - Automating Workflows for Meta’s New Agentic Framework
🗓️ Tuesday, January 13, 2026 | 12:00 PM
🎙️ Hosted by Mark Hinkle

Meta’s $2B acquisition of Manus raised a lot of questions. This session focuses on the practical answer: how to actually use Manus to automate real workflows.

In just 20 minutes, you’ll learn:

🧠 What separates Manus from conversational AI
🎨 How to create style-matched presentations in ~20 minutes
🔍 How Wide Research enables better competitive analysis
🧩 Why Manus handles long projects better than other tools
⚖️ When Manus is the right tool — and when it isn’t

You’ll leave with:

📄 A repeatable workflow template
🎁 500 free credits to get started
📹 Recording and supporting documentation
🎯 Ideal for business professionals, managers, and consultants producing presentations, research, and reports.

Join us live and register here: https://www.meetup.com/all-things-ai-live/events/312654893/?eventOrigin=group_calendar

01/07/2026

Meta didn’t spend $2B on hype. They spent it on an AI that actually gets work done. ⚙️

This week’s AI Lesson is all about Manus AI — one of the most practical agentic AI platforms available right now, and a great example of where AI is headed next.

In this lesson, we break down:

🧠 Why Manus is built for ex*****on, not conversation

🎨 How to create style-matched presentations in ~20 minutes

🔍 How Wide Research uses parallel agents for better analysis

🧩 Why Manus handles long, complex projects better than most tools

⚖️ When Manus is the right choice — and when it isn’t

This isn’t theory. It’s based on months of real, production use and the workflows that actually save time.

Read this week’s AI Lesson and see how it works in practice.

Learn How to Use this Highly Capable, Easy to Use Agentic AI Platform

01/06/2026

Join us today for All Things AI Online Lunch & Learn at 12PM EST! 🧠🍽️

LLMs are powerful — but they’re not the right tool for every job. This session shows how to build faster, cheaper, and private AI systems using specialized, local models.

You’ll learn:

🧠 When to use specialist models instead of LLMs
⚡ How local processing cuts cost and latency
🔒 How to build private, air-gapped AI agents
🛠️ A practical blueprint you can run on consumer hardware
⏱️ 30 minutes. One topic. Real takeaways.

🎙️ Host: Mark Hinkle, All Things AI/Peripety Labs
🎙️ Speaker: Robert Thelen, Co-Founder of LlamaFarm (YC W22)

Join us live with the All Things AI community.

https://www.meetup.com/all-things-ai-live/events/312650294

01/05/2026

Stop using LLMs for everything. 🚫 Yes, they’re powerful but no, they shouldn’t be your default tool for every task.

Join us tomorrow for All Things AI's Lunch & Learn!

🧠 Stop Using LLMs for Everything, A Guide to Private AI Models
🎙 Speaker: Robert Thelen (Co-Founder, LlamaFarm | ex-IBM | YC W22)
📅 January 6, 2026
⏱ 12:00PM EST

What we’ll cover:

🧠 When not to use LLMs
⚙️ How to offload work to fast, local models (ModernBERT, Isolation Forests)
💸 How to cut costs by processing data at the edge
🔒 How to build private, air-gapped AI agents — no cloud required

No fluff. One topic. Practical takeaways you can use immediately.

https://www.meetup.com/all-things-ai-live/events/312650294/?eventOrigin=group_events_list

01/05/2026

Your AI agents aren’t failing, they’re just in the wrong place. ⚠️

The edge vs. cloud debate is officially over — not in theory, but in production.

Enterprises have learned the hard way that where AI agents run determines whether they create value… or catastrophic failure.

🔹 Cloud agents are powerful — but every decision waits on a round trip
🔹 Edge agents act in real time — even when the network goes dark
🔹 In manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and transportation, milliseconds = money (or safety)

📉 500ms latency can mean missed defects
📈

From Smart Sensors to Autonomous Systems

01/03/2026

Everyone is building AI agents. Almost all of them live in the cloud. That’s a problem.

When decisions move from screens to the physical world—🏭 factories, 🏥 hospitals, 🛒 retail, ⚡ energy—latency becomes the enemy. A 200ms cloud round-trip is the difference between prevention and failure.

This week’s edition of The Artificially Intelligent Enterprise breaks down:

⚡ Why cloud-only agents fail when milliseconds matter
🤖 How edge agents deliver sub-10ms decisions on $250 hardware
📉 The hidden cost of latency, outages, and data movement
🚀 Why enterprises are quietly shifting intelligence to the edge

The takeaway is simple: Cloud agents make you smart. Edge agents keep you running.

Read the full deep dive and see whether your workflows belong in the cloud—or at the edge.

From Smart Sensors to Autonomous Systems

01/02/2026

Join us at All Things AI 2026, happening in Durham, North Carolina, on March 23–24, 2026! Here's why we think it's worth your time:

The 2025 event drew 1,600 attendees. The 2026 event targets 4,000 attendees across two venues—hands-on workshops on Day 1 and keynotes and sessions on Day 2.

It's practitioner-focused. Four tracks: AI Builders (developers), AI Engineers (ML professionals), AI Users (business practitioners), and AI Executives (strategic leaders). We're deliberately avoiding the vendor-pitch-disguised-as-content that plagues most AI conferences.

Durham is a genuine tech hub: Research Triangle Park, Duke University, and a growing AI startup ecosystem. If you're flying in, you'll find more to do than attend sessions.

Early registration is open. Pricing increases in phases, so the earlier you are, the cheaper it is.

Don’t miss your chance to connect, learn, and lead in the world of AI.

Grab your tickets here: https://cstu.io/99e12d

01/02/2026

Generative AI is powerful — but it’s not the answer to every problem. 🤖⚠️

Join us on Tuesday, January 6, 2026 at 12:00PM EST for All Things AI's 30 minute Lunch & Learn! Discover how to build fast, precise, air-gapped AI agents by combining:

🧠 ModernBERT for instant classification
📊 Isolation Forests for anomaly detection
👁️ Computer Vision for real-time insight
🧩 Local LLMs only when reasoning is truly needed

You’ll walk away with a practical blueprint for running multi-modal AI agents on consumer hardware—no cloud, no fluff, no hallucinations.

30 minutes. One topic. Real knowledge.

https://cstu.io/7134ef

12/31/2025

All Things AI returns—4× bigger and better. Two days designed for people who don’t just talk about AI, but actually use it.

Day 1: Training Day – hands-on, practical sessions to sharpen your AI skills fast.
Day 2: Conference Day – industry leaders, real-world case studies, and what’s next in AI.

More speakers. More space. More applied learning you can take back to work immediately.

If you’re serious about deploying, managing, or building with AI—this is your event.

🗓️ March 23–24, 2026
📍 Carolina Theatre & Durham Convention Center
🎟️ Grab your tickets here: https://cstu.io/87033d

12/30/2025

Most New Year’s resolutions don’t fail because of lack of motivation.

They fail because there’s no accountability.

By February, 80% of people quit. Not because the goals were unrealistic — but because they stopped tracking 📉

This week’s AI Lesson shows how to use a ChatGPT Project as a personal accountability system:

📊 Track real data (fitness, money, learning)
🧠 Spot patterns you’re too close to see
🗂️ Remember every excuse — and call you out on it
🔁 Stay consistent all year, not just January

Mark Hinkle uses one Project to track his health, income, and reading — and the difference isn’t willpower. It’s having to face my own numbers.

If your resolutions matter this year, your system has to be stronger than your excuses.

👉 Read the full AI Lesson to see the exact setup, prompts, and workflow

A ChatGPT Project that tracks your goals, imports your real data, and keeps you honest all year

12/23/2025

You’re paying $30 per user per month for Microsoft 365 Copilot. 💸

Most teams are using it like a fancy autocomplete.

Last week’s AI Lesson breaks down 7 advanced Copilot features most users miss — tools that quietly turn Copilot from a helper into something closer to an internal AI team:

🧠 Researcher & Analyst agents for real multi-step work
📊 AI inside Excel formulas (yes, really)
📝 Memory that actually learns how you work
⚙️ Agent mode that builds dashboards end-to-end

These aren’t previews or experiments. They’re live, included in your license, and already separating power users from everyone else.

👉 Read this edition before the next one drops — and make sure you’re getting $300/month of value from the $30 you’re already paying.

The enterprise AI capabilities hiding behind your $30/month subscription—and how to actually use them