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When information becomes cheap, judgement becomes valuable

June 2026

AI is getting very good at processing public information. But in sophisticated public affairs environments, the scarce layer was never public information — it is non-public intelligence, political interpretation, and a seat in the discussions where outcomes are shaped.

AI is getting very good at processing public information. But in sophisticated public affairs environments, the scarce layer was never public information — it is non-public intelligence, political interpretation, and a seat in the discussions where outcomes are shaped.

AI is getting very good at processing public information. But in sophisticated public affairs environments, the scarce layer was never public information — it is non-public intelligence, political interpretation, and a seat in the discussions where outcomes are shaped.

In sophisticated public affairs environments, the core problem is rarely the access to and processing of public information.

A few years ago, when I worked in-house, I struggled to see the business case for investing heavily in AI-driven intelligence services. This was before today’s much more powerful and accessible tools — but honestly, the underlying logic remains largely the same.

My problem was never that I lacked policy documents, monitoring, summaries or the ability to process public information. My problem was non-public information, political interpretation, and access to the key discussions shaping outcomes before anything ever became public.

Why then invest heavily in tools that could “more efficiently” summarise and analyse information I already had access to?

Today, as a consultant, I increasingly see the same dynamic from clients. Nobody is paying premium advisory fees for monitoring or basic intelligence production that can increasingly be generated almost for free with generally available AI tools.

What they pay for is the deeper layer: expertise, judgement, political instinct, stakeholder access, and an understanding of how institutional systems actually function in practice.

No AI agent in the world will sit you down for coffee with a policy adviser during negotiations on a sensitive file to discuss what is politically possible and what is not.

AI is an incredibly powerful tool, and I use it extensively myself every day. But the efficiency it provides is quickly becoming a baseline expectation. The real value you provide lies in the things that AI cannot do.