Erik Ankrom

Husband, father, coach, K-State alum, tech enthusiast, sports and music fan. Ex-Cerner, Ex-Netsmart, Ex-AWS, now AI-focused at Netsmart.

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

Say what you will about the person, but Tom Cruise is one hell of an actor.

[Jason Hanna @JasonHannaphoto]

Foreshadowing.
The shadow of downtown KC casts on to high level clouds above the K. One of the coolest pictures I think I’ve gotten lucky enough to take at the K. Especially with where we will be moving to. So cool.

[Evan Rodriguez @EvanRodriguezCT]

After the team flew back following UConn’s National Championship loss, Tarris Reed Jr. prepared a speech on short notice for UConn’s Athletes In Action meeting.

“I told myself I would let the Holy Spirit speak through me.”

He revealed that night, both Azzi Fudd and KK Arnold of UConn WBB got baptized

Truly amazing work and an inspirational message from T-Reed 🙏

(Via iamtarrisreed/IG)

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

I bookmarked the v1 release of this framework and referenced it often. Some good updates in v2. Worth a read for any AI leader, manager, or modern HR team.

[Wade Foster @wadefoster]

Today we released our new AI Fluency Rubric.

We use it for every hire, focusing on what they’ve actually built.

Last May we open-sourced V1. Hundreds of companies used it to screen candidates and develop teams. It worked. But the floor moved fast.

An updated look at the 3 levels of AI fluency at @Zapier:

1. Capable: "I use AI to operate at a meaningfully higher level."

2. Adoptive: "I orchestrate AI and build systems that elevate how I work."

3. Transformative: "I re-engineer how work happens."

We evaluate theses across 4 dimensions: Mindset, Strategy, Building, and Accountability.

We're sharing V2 publicly for the same reason we shared V1: every company needs a framework for this, and most don't have one yet.

Don’t see your role? See all departments / learn more here: https://t.co/EqLTK3Xfyr

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

I see kids glued to iPads all the time, my kids included. But we also bought our kids the basic reading-only Kindle that we purposefully allow unlimited use of and encourage it before bedtime. Got this last night from my son. Great investment. Approved.

[Aaron Levie @levie]

Had meetings and a dinner with 20+ enterprise AI and IT leaders today. Lots of interesting conversations around the state of AI in large enterprises, especially regulated businesses.

Here are some of general trends:

* Agents are clearly the big thing. Enterprises moving from talking about chatbots to agents, though we’re still very early. Coding is still the dominant agentic use-case being adopted thus far, with other categories of across knowledge work starting to emerge. Lots of agentic work moving from pilots and PoCs into production, and some enterprises had lots of active live use-cases.

* Agentic use-cases span every part of a business, from back office operations to client facing experiences from sales to customer onboarding workflows. General feeling is that agentic workflows will hit every part of an organization, often with biggest focus on delivering better for customers, getting better insights and intelligence from data and documents, speeding up high ROI workflows with agents, and so on. Very limited discussion on pure cost cutting.

* Data and AI governance still remain core challenges. Getting data and content into a spot that agents can securely and easily operate on remains a huge task for more organizations. Years of data management fragmentation that wasn’t a problem now is an issue for enterprises looking to adopt agents. And governing what agents can do with data in a workflow still a major topic.

* Identity emerging as a big topic. Can the agent have access to everything you have? In a world of dozens of agents working on behalf, potentially too much data exposure and scope for the agents. How do we manage agents with partitioned level of access to your information?

* Lots of emerging questions on how we will budget for tokens across use-cases and teams. Companies don’t want to constrain use-cases, but equally need to be mindful of ultimate token budgets. This is going to become a bigger part of OpEx over time, and probably won’t make sense to be considered an IT budget anymore. Likely needs to be factored into the rest of operating expenses.

* Interoperability is key. Every enterprise is deploying multiple AI systems right now, and it’s unlikely that there’s going to be a single platform to rule them all. Customers are getting savvier on how to handle agent interoperability, and this will be one of the biggest drivers of an AI stack going forward.

Lots more takeaways than just this, but needless to say the momentum is building but equally enterprises are acutely aware of the change management and work ahead. Lots of opportunity right now.

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

We are at an inflection point we will look back on, almost like BC/AD. Pre-LLM and Post-LLM.

The snapshot of where we are at today will likely be amplified, which begs the question, what will trigger a reverse trend to currently trained datasets?

The importance of keeping humans part of the RLHF feedback loop and red-teaming are critical. But we are relying on a few frontier labs to “do the right thing” and to be the arbiters of truth, based on data that is the loudest on the internet.

See the example below of a dataset that only amplifies a disturbing trend. What reverses that trend? Humans, not AI.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

50% of all relationship advice on Reddit is “leave.” 15 years of data, 52 million comments, and the trend line only goes one direction.

A researcher filtered r/relationship_advice down to 1,166,592 quality comments and tracked what people actually recommend. In 2010, “End Relationship” sat around 30%. By 2025, it’s approaching 50%.

“Communicate” dropped from 22% to 14%. “Compromise” collapsed from 7% to 3%. “Give Space” fell from 25% to 13%. Every category that requires patience lost ground every single year.

The one category growing faster than “leave” is “Seek Therapy,” which went from 1% to 6%. The subreddit is slowly learning to say “this is above my pay grade.”

Train a model on this dataset and it would absolutely tell people to break up. The training data is 50% “leave” and climbing. The model wouldn’t be broken. It would be accurately reflecting what 52 million commenters actually believe about your relationship.

A 50% prior that you should leave, a 14% prior that you should talk about it, and a 6% prior that you need a professional. That’s not LLM psychosis. That’s the median human opinion on your relationship, backed by the largest advice dataset ever assembled.

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

#NewProfilePic

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

@BasedMikeLee @DOGE 8. Congressional term limits.

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

Coaching considerations for K-State and Chiefs fans: Kingsbury OC at K-State, and McDaniel OC for Chiefs. K-State with Avery Johnson and Chiefs with Mahomes, along with HC's that are offensive minded. Schedule the interviews!

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

@SecKennedy is simply kicking ass. He's THE most influential member of the Trump administration. There has not been a better role at a better time for him to make a true difference in the lives of Americans for years to come.

[John Rich🇺🇸 @johnrich]

Show this video to your kids…Wow😳

[K-State Athletics @kstatesports]

Announcing the 36th Head Coach in @KStateFB history, Collin Klein.

📄 https://t.co/CLdGAjZ1QF // #EMAW

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

I’ll start. Joe Jackson! Talk about the k-state mentality! Looking forward to next year!

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

Love my cats. Bowl eligible! Great job being average. No doubt everyone in the program gave it their all. However, In the NIL world… let’s talk business. Who has exceeded expectations?

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

@WillyFoosball

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

I have been a GM buyer for 20 years. If they decide to go this route, I’m seriously considering alternatives. If this is the decision making direction for a customer-centric convenience, what else will they decide in the future that is in my best interest?

[Popular Mechanics @PopMech]

GM Is Saying Goodbye To Apple CarPlay https://t.co/xTRXg9qkVw

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

Once k-state got past the first drive of pre-planned plays, Matt Wells goes back to his nonsensical play calling. Kleiman needs to be reviewing every play call before it gets sent in.

[Erik Ankrom @erikankrom]

Look at Avery's body language after tough plays, drops, incompletions. Just make it a point to watch. I haven't seen a leader mentality. He still has ALL of his god-given talents, but something or someone is in his ear and challenging his ability to use them.

I'm pretty sure Kstate hires a motivation coach full time, correct? I've seen him promoting Nebraska football this season on here, so maybe not anymore. Perhaps he could light a fire under this team to show some grit. Or maybe he's also challenged elsewhere?

Either way, HCCK and ADGT need to change something, soon. Avery's part of that discussion. The whole team and staff are.