About
Thomas Tornatore
Writer. Advisor.
AI arrives inside tools people already use. Decisions follow, often before anyone has agreed who owns them. I write about those decisions, the people who inherit their consequences, and what it takes to own them on purpose.
Why this publication
Follow the decision.
Find the person.
The Wrong Default traces real events back to the choices around them: what was permitted, what was assumed, and whose judgment was missing when it mattered.
My background spans regulated financial services, education, enterprise technology, and security administration. Across those settings, the recurring question was practical: who could make the call, who could stop it, and who would answer afterward?
That experience informs the lens here. The essays apply it to AI through documented cases, source material, and clearly identified interpretation.
Selected writing and speaking
Speaking and interviewsTalk and Q&A · Tech Alley Henderson
AI Governance: A Practical Health Check
View the appearanceGuest piece · CoS Signal, July 2026
The AI-Use Inventory: What Your Team Actually Uses
View the appearanceInterview · Hello Henderson, episode 18
Who’s Really Running Your Business?
View the appearanceMini-conference · Analytical Chemistry Startups
The Unfair Advantage: AI for Analytical Science Startups
View the appearanceFrom the essays to the method
A decision has an owner.
Give it a structure.
Thomas Tornatore’s published decision frameworks explore the same question in four settings. Read them on their home sites, with the full method and supporting material.
Personal
What you believe, what you hand off, and what stays yours.
Read the framework02Company
Which decisions the business owns, and who answers for each one.
Read the framework03Government
Decisions people cannot opt out of, and how they can contest them.
Read the framework04Education
The decisions schools make about students, and who owns them.
Read the frameworkThe work around the writing
The same question,
in different settings.
Fellowship Intelligence
The AI governance advisory firm I founded. FI helps organizations establish ownership, controls, and escalation paths for AI use.
Advisory at FIStill in Charge
A free Fellowship Intelligence initiative helping students use AI without handing over their judgment. I also write its newsletter, On Judgment.
Visit Still in ChargeAlways Questioning
The creator collaborative I am a founding member of. My author site brings together the broader writing and creative work.
Explore the author site