Tom Killi

ABOUT

Tom Killi

I've developed software for more than 40 years, and systems that learn since 1993. I've also engineered, built and operated power plants, and we built two of them in less than 4 months, during the covid lockdown. Here I write about how AI-prepared work earns trust, the shortfall in electricity that limits AI, and the hidden failure mode in AI-generated code. I think they are some of the most important aspects of the AI industry today.

Systems that learn

In 1996 I founded x.hlp Technologies: enterprise software that captured how people used applications, paired those interactions with outcomes, and improved training from the results. We served 30+ Fortune 500 companies including JP Morgan and Shell, plus McKinsey and NATO, before the 2004 acquisition. Two acquisitions later the technology was inside SAP.

My patent from that work, published as US20010039552A1, has since been cited by 50+ patents, from Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Samsung, Nokia and SAP itself among others. The number is there so you can check it.

In 2014 I founded Wyetree, building energy infrastructure and trading software. That architecture, real-time coordination under uncertainty, became the foundation for CleanAim®, founded 2020.

Wyetree is an engineering contractor, and it has a commercial permit to sell natural gas in Mexico.

Power plants

From 2020 to 2024 we engineered, built and operated four natural-gas power plants. Three of the four plants used turbines. The last used engines.

We built two of the four power plants in 2020, in less than 4 months, during the covid lockdown. On day one, nothing was in hand.

On all four projects we also built the interconnection from the transmission line, and the metering and regulating station for gas. The plants ran 24/7.

I write The Gigawatt Gap from that side: the shortfall in electricity that limits AI, and how it gets closed.

From start to finish: when we built two power plants during the covid lockdown in 2020

Play the film

Photos from the four natural-gas plants

Tom Killi, right

What I do now

I am the author of Silent Wiring: The Hidden Failure Mode in AI-Generated Code.

The book names the problem. CleanAim® is what I built to fix it, and what we now build with.

CleanAim® Studio is its fourth generation. We build and maintain AI applications that automate the recurring work of professional firms: reconciling a client's books to the tax authority's record, testing every transaction instead of a sample, drafting a contract from the agreed terms. The AI prepares the work. The firm's own people do the work with it, decide and sign, and every figure can be checked against its source.

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