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An agent can't follow a rule it can't read, and at most companies the rules live in PDFs, shared drives and people's heads. Stephen Forte walks through the step most companies skip before handing work to an agent: writing one process's rules down, in one place a machine can read.
In this episode, Stephen Forte covers:
- Machine-Readable Government. On Nov 2, Abu Dhabi and OpenAI rewrote a defined set of policies so an AI system can check a case against the rules and link each recommendation to the exact clause. An official verifies, corrects or overrides, and a person makes the final decision.
- The first pilot. Food import registrations at Abu Dhabi's food safety authority: about 20,000 a year, drawing on 1,400 policy documents, some over 700 pages. Routine checks that took days now take minutes. Construction permits, licensing, HR compliance and procurement are next.
- The caveat. It is a self-announced pilot with no independent results and no published error or override rates. The lesson doesn't depend on them.
- Your company's permits. Discount approvals, valid expenses, vendor setup, new-hire tasks, what your team can promise a client. Those are rules, applied every day.
- Where the rules live. Wikis, PDFs, forms, SharePoint, employee manuals. A good employee knows who to ask. An agent applies whatever version it's given, with complete confidence.
- Stale copies, not conflicts. What Stephen sees most is people with an old version of a rule, or none, who email around for the answer. The answer depends on who they asked.
- One queryable repository. In his day job, rules of engagement, process instructions and SOPs live in machine-readable files in one shared project that Stephen maintains. One version, changed there first, and the place an agent should start.
- What machine-readable means. Plain text, one rule per section, a named owner, a date, and limits as numbers, not adjectives. "Discounts over 15% need regional VP sign-off" is checkable. "Large discounts need approval" is not.
- It has to come from the top. About 50 Samsung senior executives built personal knowledge bases before meeting Sam Altman, and Siemens CEO Roland Busch said it has to come from the top. If the CEO asks the repository first, the team follows.
- Where to start. Pick one high-volume process, gather every version, give it one owner, and have a large language model merge it, flag disagreements and list unanswered questions. Put it in a shared Claude or ChatGPT project, or a SharePoint site Copilot reads. For a month, answer emails with "ask the repository."
Sources:
- Abu Dhabi Media Office (Nov 2, 2026): https://www.mediaoffice.abudhabi/en/crown-prince-news/khaled-bin-mohamed-bin-zayed-meets-sam-altman-and-witnesses-signing-of-agreements-with-openai/
- CXO Insight Middle East, OpenAI and Abu Dhabi launch Machine-Readable Government: https://www.cxoinsightme.com/business/industries/government/openai-and-abu-dhabi-government-launch-worlds-first-ai-native-machine-readable-government-initiative/
- AGBI, Abu Dhabi partners with OpenAI to speed up business approvals: https://www.agbi.com/ai/2026/11/abu-dhabi-partners-with-openai-to-speed-up-business-approvals/
- Korea Herald, Samsung executives meet Altman (Oct 31, 2026): https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10921312
- Korea Herald, Siemens CEO Roland Busch (Nov 1, 2026): https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10921699
The AI Brief from the YPO Technology Network is a daily executive briefing on the AI developments that matter to business leaders. Hosted by Stephen Forte.
