This month’s signals are part memo to financial services regulators on what they’re getting wrong on investor education, part guide for global citizens, and part group therapy to all internet users. And yes, this IOV Index is a bit all over the place, just like me. But in 2025, I actually don’t think that’s a bug. It’s a feature! I’ve been called a multi-hyphenate, and occasionally … gently… asked if I’ve ever been diagnosed with ADHD. Whatever it is or isn’t, it works. It lets me spot patterns across systems that don’t usually talk to each other. That’s what this index is for. Including, this month, a research-backed warning: AI might be making us… dumber.
What I Read
🧠 Books, essays, and long-form pieces shaped my thinking this month.
A Press Release (of all the things!) Just Rewrote Internet Economics.
Cloudflare, the infrastructure giant powering 20% of the internet, just dropped a bombshell. AI bots are now blocked by default from scraping any new sites it hosts unless they get explicit permission and agree to pay.
Shots fired in the battle over who gets paid in the AI era.
For years, media companies have been fighting a losing battle: their content gets scraped, trained on, and spun into LLM outputs, usually without credit, attribution, or backlinks. Cases like The New York Times vs. OpenAI are playing out in the courts. The legal argument has been: “If it’s public, it’s fair game.” But no one expected all public content to become raw fuel for commercial AI, with zero incentives left for creators.
If creators are no longer rewarded for the value they add, why would they continue adding it?
Cloudflare didn’t wait for regulators. They flipped the script overnight. “AI bots - ask nicely and pay up.” This one SaaS policy just did what months of policy panels haven’t. I expect more infrastructure players to follow. The web’s economic model is finally starting to fight back.
Systems, Signals & Mental Models
🧠 Themes or frameworks I’ve been sitting with… from macro trends to micro reflections.
Don’t Just Personalize Ads. Personalize Learning.
I've been in a string of conversations lately about what education looks like in the AI era and how to make it actually work for people. One company, HOURS, builds personalized AI tutors that adapt to how you think, using your bio-encoded learning preferences to bring material to life.
Imagine if Sir Ken Robinson (he delivered the most famous TED Talk ever) were your personal learning coach. That’s the direction we’re headed. It’s not just “ask me anything” anymore. It’s “coach me like I learn best.”
This mirrors the broader shift in behavior: people aren’t searching for information. They’re searching for answers and guidance. That’s why FIN-fluencers (financial influencers) have taken off and are giving regulators heartburn, and why course platforms and learning AI tools are about to have a massive moment.
Regulators vs. Influencers: Who’s Winning? The Blunt Truth I Was Nervous to Share
I was recently invited to speak to the executive heads of 38 global securities regulators (from the SEC to the Ontario Securities Commission) on how AI is changing investor education.
Here’s the story I opened with: I once taught a Junior Achievement class on financial literacy to middle schoolers. I asked, “Who has a debit or credit card?” Every hand went up. Then I asked, “Do you know which one it is?” Nearly every hand dropped.They weren’t sure.
That knowledge gap doesn’t disappear with age. Financial literacy continues to be fragmented, opaque, and unevenly distributed. It depends on who you know and what you accidentally absorb.
So of course financial influencers are winning. When I tallied up the collective social media reach of all securities regulators, the number hovered around 5 million. One popular finfluencer already surpasses that. A teenage gamer has 40 times the reach. Let’s stop pretending regulators are winning in the educational arena.
So I posed the question to the regulator group: If this is how people are consuming advice, how might you meet them there? Without compromising the integrity of the capital markets?
If investors are learning from TikTok and YouTube, then that’s where financial education needs to meet them. Not later. Not cautiously. Now.
And here's the silver lining in all of this: we can’t scale personalized financial guidance without AI. That’s the tool that can finally make financial education widespread, helping the investors and the regulators. Win-win, my favourite model.
VC & Tech Notes
Venture signals, spaces I’m watching, and thoughts on what’s emerging.
The Dignity of Work & the Co-Pilot Conundrum
This month I’ve had version after version of the same conversation: “We’ve rolled out AI. Why aren’t people using it?” The business case is there. The tools exist. And yet... adoption lags.
The truth? People are exhausted. Employee engagement scores are in the basement. 85% of employees are DISENGAGED at work. Read that again. You can’t roll out productivity tools to a workforce in burnout and expect magic. And yet, tech update after tech update is being rolled out.
Behavioral scientists are calling this techno-stress. More tools, more dashboards, more notifications... aren’t helping. They’re making it worse. And the old playbook of prior tech rollouts, where an IT system gets updated and users are simply expected to “just get on with it,” doesn’t work. AI co-pilots don’t work without the human part of the “co-pilot,”... and the pilots are on a silent strike.
You can’t automate your way out of emotional disengagement. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you’re a leadership team trying to get your workforce to actually use AI… you have to invest in readiness. No shortcuts there. And remember, only 33% of employees trust their leadership teams to be making decisions that actually benefit the workforce.
Personal Notes / In the Field
Moments that made me pause. In work, life, or the spaces between.
📍Mozi: Never answer a “where in the world are you this week?” text again
I’ve been obsessed with an app called Mozi that quietly solves a big logistical headache: keeping track of where your friends are in the world and when you might cross paths.
Another aspect I find brilliant: it was built by ex-Twitter folks, but it’s the anti-social network. No followers. No broadcasting. Just real-life proximity maps of the people already in your contacts list. I no longer need to keep track of my own travel plans AND those of my other global friend groups. More: “We’re in the same city, want to grab a smoothie?” Tech really is best when it brings people together, not apart.
A Travel Fail of Mine, with a message
After hosting the V360 Awards (a highlight of my month and a celebration of what our teams at Accenture are building), I boarded a train from DC to New York. Exhausted. Euphoric.
I fell asleep.
A ticket inspector woke me up somewhere past NYC with a “Miss, tickets please”. Half asleep, I dig through my purse for a long-invalid ticket. “You do realize we passed there... quite a while ago?” I had to backtrack a full hour.
Moral of the story? Your body doesn’t distinguish between good stress and bad stress. It only registers overload. And even on your best days, you still need recovery
What’s Sticking With Me
A quote, question, or concept I’m carrying into next month.
Is AI making us stupid?
That’s the title (more or less) of this research paper :
“The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects from a Survey of Knowledge Workers.”
TL;DR: People who lean too hard on AI start trusting it more than themselves. And think less as a result.
This is an ode to humans to avoid the temptation of generating AI slop and calling it a day. That’s not where growth comes from. And if you’re not actively growing, you’re declining. Cognitive atrophy is real, and it’s something I’m most conscious of avoiding with my most junior teammates, and reinforce one of my fave new acronyms #FMAI (Formed Mindfully With AI) as coined by .
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