Featured articles from: Stephanie Shen, and Cobus Greyling.
Additional reading from: Annalise Sumpon, Daniel Tunkelang, Rachel Draelos, and Michael Andrews.
News from: Microsoft, Deepgram, Acquia, Otter. ai.
Our next issue arrives 5/20/26.
All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index
Opinion / Analysis
The illusion of understanding
Wittgenstein, neuroscience, and why language is not thought in humans or AI
Stephanie Shen’s intriguing essay provides novel way to look at how humans and LLMs each “think”. Shen wrote this piece for a general audience; no philosophical, neuroscience, or AI expertise required. Every reader will learn something. Highly recommended. (12 min)
https://medium.com/illumination/the-illusion-of-understanding-8b083cc1e11e
The AI agent reality gap
Researching AI agents in production and the gap between demo and deploy
Cobus Greyling summarizes a study, Measuring Agents in Production, from UC Berkeley, Intesa Sanpaolo, UIUC, Stanford University, and IBM Research, that surveyed 306 practitioners and conducted 20 in-depth case studies across 26 domains. Greyling’s article design is a bit loud, but a way to quickly get the take-aways, some of which are surprising. Link to the paper below. (8 min)
Article: https://medium.com/@cobusgreyling/the-ai-agent-reality-gap-143c04136b5b
Paper (PDF): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.04123
More Reading
- Layers on layers — How you can improve your recommendation systems via IBM Data Science in Practice
- Distilling Retrieval Pipelines to a Single Embedding Model via Daniel Tunkelang
- LLMs struggle with triage and answering patient questions. How can we make this safer? via Glass Box Medicine
- How will bots see your content? via Story Needle
Content Technology News
Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365 now generally available
Agent 365 is the control plane for agents, extending the visibility, control, and trust that organizations rely on for users to the agents they deploy.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/05/01/microsoft-agent-365-now-generally-available-expands-capabilities-and-integrations/
Deepgram launches Flux Multilingual
Flux Multilingual supports 10 languages in a single conversational model, enabling teams to build and deploy voice agents globally with one integration.
https://deepgram.com/learn/introducing-flux-multilingual
Acquia enhances Acquia Source
The unified intelligent workspace with the new Acquia AI allows digital teams manage content, applications, AI agents, and analytics in one place.
https://www.acquia.com/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-announces-significant-updates-acquia-source-and-launches-acquia-ai
Otter. ai launches enterprise Conversational Knowledge Engine
Knowledge Engine turns every meeting, call, and discussion into data that is searchable, cross-referenced, connected to your existing tools, and available to your AI systems.
https://otter.ai/blog/otter-ai-evolves-from-ai-notetaker-to-create-100b-enterprise-conversational-knowledge-engine-market
The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, data, web, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news. We do not sell or share personal data.
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