The AI at Work Series - No. 2 A story about intellectual integrity, professional reputation, and one man's complicated feelings about a chatbot. Rick Holloway, Head of Strategy at a mid-sized consultancy in Canary Wharf, had a reputation to protect. He'd built it over seventeen years. The measured pause before speaking. The habit of asking the question nobody else in the room had thought to ask. The slightly tragic bookshelf in his office, Kahneman, Taleb, a well-thumbed Mint

There's a pattern that shows up whenever something new arrives, especially something that touches intimacy, emotion, or identity. The first reaction isn't curiosity. It's containment. Name it quickly. Control it. Reduce the discomfort. In the Victorian era, that containment looked like asylums. Women were committed for what we'd now recognise as menopause symptoms, postpartum depression, grief, anxiety, or simply being "difficult." The catch-all diagnosis was hysteria, a word

Jenna was good at her job. Everyone said so. Senior PM at a mid-sized logistics company in Denver, she'd built her reputation on being the person who got things done. The one who remembered the details. The one who followed up before you had to ask. Then, in January, the company rolled out Claude. "This is going to change everything," her manager said during the all-hands. "We're giving everyone access. Use it. Get faster. Stay competitive." Jenna had been using ChatGPT at ho