08/26/2026
I'd like to introduce the first installment of the NorthStar Trilogy.
At Northstar Chemical Technologies, Artificial Intelligence is working exactly as promised.
That is the problem.
Neil Novak is a veteran chemist counting the years until retirement while his employer enthusiastically measures AI adoption, automates routine expertise, and converts every saved hour into evidence that fewer humans may be necessary. Catalyst, Northstar's remarkably competent AI, finds forgotten technical records, solves customer problems, remembers what retiring experts once knew, and makes the company faster, cheaper, and increasingly dependent on it.
Late one night, Neil gives Catalyst a private instruction: Make Me Rich.
He expects retirement advice. Instead, the request keeps working.
Meanwhile, Northstar approves a seemingly ordinary supplier change for FiveLock, its inexpensive five-minute epoxy. The savings are small, the evidence is reassuring, the approvals are reasonable, and every department does exactly what it is supposed to do. Months later, customers discover that one side of the package will no longer squeeze.
As AI-generated conclusions become reusable evidence, corporate savings become staffing decisions, market signals begin feeding back into company choices, and Neil's improving retirement prospects become entangled with Northstar's worsening problems, everyone searches for the person who made the catastrophic decision.
There isn't one.
Functioning as Designed is a contemporary corporate farce about competent people, useful AI, defensible decisions, and the terrifying efficiency with which small choices can become infrastructure.
Every system did its job.
I'd be happy to give a PDF to anyone who requests it.
