Thinking about
what comes next.
I’m Rich Bowen. I’ve spent more than 15 years working at some of the world’s largest technology companies and at fast-growing startups. Today, I also advise startups, serve on boards, teach, invest, and write.
Working inside technology has made me interested not only in what products can do, but in what happens after they enter the world: how they earn trust, acquire authority, reshape institutions, and change what people believe is possible. These essays explore artificial intelligence, belief, work, and human agency.
The Artificial Divine
When creation transcends its creator: artificial intelligence, deception, and the possibility of a new religion.
Working paper
Is Anyone There?
Artificial consciousness and the limits of evidence. What justifies believing that a machine experiences anything?
Working essay
Are We Using AI to Write Better Emails?
The gap between artificial intelligence’s transformative promise and what we mostly ask it to do today.
Working essay
The Jobs AI Takes and the People It Makes
Why the future of work is not only about replacement, but about becoming capable of what once seemed impossible.
Working essay
What Would Count as AGI?
World peace, medical breakthroughs, human work, and the problem of defining general intelligence.
Working essay
The Window We Cannot Miss
What social media’s delayed reckoning should teach us about governing AI before power and dependency harden.
Working essay
When Search Stops Being a List of Links
How generative AI is changing search from a ranked list of sources into a system that composes answers.
Revisited essay
An evolving collection of long-form essays.