Four situations you have probably already been in
A procurement team approves a tool because its demo was fluent — without asking whether fluency is evidence of reliability.
A board signs off on an AI strategy built on vendor claims that no one in the room had the tools to interrogate.
A governance document specifies “human oversight” without defining what oversight means when the system’s reasoning is opaque.
A 97% accuracy figure is treated as evidence of readiness, with no one asking what happens in the 3%.
None of these is hypothetical. Each is a specific kind of mistake — and each is avoidable, once your team has the vocabulary to see it coming.
Why this perspective, and why now
AI is being adopted faster than most organisations can evaluate it. The systems do genuinely reason in some respects; the impressive demonstrations are real. But there is a precise gap between what AI does well and what it can be relied upon for — and the consequences of that gap fall on the people making procurement, governance, and strategy decisions, not on the vendors selling the tools.
This workshop is led by Alexander V. Gheorghiu, a logician at the University of Southampton and UCL whose research addresses the formal foundations of reasoning — what it means, mathematically, for a system to actually think rather than predict. His 2025 essay High School Algebra and the Limits of AI won the Graham Hoare Prize from the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. He writes on AI for the Times Literary Supplement and The Conversation.
The workshop translates that research into something operational: a framework your team can use, on Monday morning, to interrogate the AI claims in front of them.
- University of Southampton
- UCL
- Times Literary Supplement
What participants leave with
| Length | Half day |
|---|---|
| Delivery | In person or remote (live, not pre-recorded) |
| Group size | Up to 20 participants |
| Audience | Leadership, strategy, and product teams — not technical teams |
| Prerequisites | None. No prior technical knowledge assumed. |
| Fee | £4,000 |
By the end of the half-day, your team will be able to:
- Distinguish robust AI capabilities from brittle ones — and know which questions reliably tell them apart.
- Interrogate vendor and internal claims with rigour rather than instinct.
- Identify where your current AI strategy rests on assumptions the technology cannot support.
- Frame governance and accountability decisions around what AI can — and cannot — formally be held responsible for.
Participants leave with a shared conceptual vocabulary for evaluating AI claims, immediately usable in vendor meetings, board conversations, and internal strategy sessions. A short reference document is provided. The aim is not a briefing that fades by Friday but a durable shift in how your team thinks.
Teams that have done this work make faster, more confident AI decisions, with less reliance on vendor framing and a clearer basis for due diligence. In a market where AI procurement is accelerating, that is a direct competitive advantage.
Who this is for
- Leaders who have signed, or are considering, a significant AI contract and want a rigorous basis for evaluating it.
- Strategy teams whose AI roadmap rests on assumptions no one has stress-tested.
- Anyone who has sat in a meeting where someone cited an AI output and no one asked how it got there.
- The person in the room who suspects the AI conversation is missing something but lacks the vocabulary to say what. This workshop is especially for you.
Try the thinking before you buy the workshop
The free AI Claims Diagnostic is seven AI claims drawn from real vendor materials, board decks, and policy documents. It takes four minutes. It will tell you, concretely, whether your team would benefit from this workshop — or whether you are already asking the right questions.
Questions
Is this technical? No. It is designed for people making AI decisions, not building AI systems. The ideas are rigorous; the framing is not.
We already have an AI strategy. Why do we need this? The workshop does not replace your strategy. It stress-tests the assumptions it rests on. Most AI strategies are built on claims about what the technology can do; this workshop gives your team the tools to distinguish the claims that hold up from the ones that do not.
Half a day is a lot of time for a leadership team. It is — which is why the workshop is built to produce a durable framework, not a one-off briefing. Teams report using the reference document in vendor meetings months later. Measured against the cost of a single bad AI procurement decision, half a day is small.
Can we do it remotely? Yes, with equal effectiveness. Remote sessions are live and interactive, not pre-recorded.
Enquire about a workshop
A limited number of workshops are available each quarter. To discuss availability and fit for your team, fill in the form below and I will be in touch within two working days.