Ashley Hirst writes on community — Jewish and British — artificial intelligence, and insurance & risk.https://ashleyhirst.com/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-09-10-how-to-live-with-difference/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-09-10-how-to-live-with-difference/The bar on Catholics and Jews advising the King on bishops is not an insult to Catholics and Jews. It is the seam that holds the established church apart from the state. If you want to unpick it, say so, and let us argue.Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-09-08-hath-not-a-jew-votes/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-09-08-hath-not-a-jew-votes/Apply your Moroccan standard, or your Turkish one, or your Crimean one, but apply one standard.Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-09-01-apple-didnt-lose-the-ai-race-it-declined-to-enter-it/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-09-01-apple-didnt-lose-the-ai-race-it-declined-to-enter-it/By treating frontier models as components to buy, benchmark and replace, Apple is betting its AI advantage will come from silicon, privacy and the integration layer.Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-31-anthropics-max-plan-has-a-trust-problem/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-31-anthropics-max-plan-has-a-trust-problem/Promise 4x, charge 2x, get ~1.5x — not a great way to get trust.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-30-what-i-would-focus-on-in-the-src-division/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-30-what-i-would-focus-on-in-the-src-division/I would focus on the places where British Jews need practical change: workplaces, public institutions and universities.Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-30-why-i-came-back-to-swiss-re/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-30-why-i-came-back-to-swiss-re/Three months after rejoining Swiss Re, some reflections on four years in a small company, what they taught me, and why an institution I already trusted was the right place to use it.Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-28-why-i-am-standing-for-the-src-division/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-28-why-i-am-standing-for-the-src-division/I want British Jews to do more than feel secure enough to endure. I want us to live openly, confidently and joyfully, as the whole Jewish tribe.Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-24-learning-by-experience-in-a-world-of-ai/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-24-learning-by-experience-in-a-world-of-ai/If AI takes over routine underwriting, the answer is not to preserve a hand-underwriting quota: it is to route exceptions to humans and make replay the training ground.Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-21-the-trouble-with-training-talent/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-08-21-the-trouble-with-training-talent/Firms never paid for junior training: it was a free byproduct of low-value work that AI has now taken, and no individual firm has an incentive to restart funding the talent pipeline.Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-07-16-an-open-letter-to-the-archbishop-of-canterbury-do-not-sort-u/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-07-16-an-open-letter-to-the-archbishop-of-canterbury-do-not-sort-u/I am not asking you to defend the Jews. I am asking you to defend the establishment, and the un-radical proposition that the church of the whole nation cannot pick which of the nation's minorities it will hearThu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-07-13-we-waited-for-shabbat-to-end-then-roared-for-englands-victor/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-07-13-we-waited-for-shabbat-to-end-then-roared-for-englands-victor/As an Orthodox Jew I had to wait 18 minutes into the match before turning on the TV – but after that I was cheering just as loud as any other fanMon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-06-12-iteration-eats-planning-for-lunch/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-06-12-iteration-eats-planning-for-lunch/Anyone trying to get something done inside a company faces an implicit choice: how much to settle before they start.Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-05-28-mr-osborne-let-us-find-our-nerve-again/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-05-28-mr-osborne-let-us-find-our-nerve-again/Dear George Osborne ,Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-05-11-why-the-standard-life-model-could-go-european/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-05-11-why-the-standard-life-model-could-go-european/Anyone watching the UK bulk annuity market has been turning over the Standard Life carve-out for the past few weeks (I know, this is a mass appeal article).Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-05-07-five-thoughts-on-life-insurance-liabilities-being-taken-priv/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-05-07-five-thoughts-on-life-insurance-liabilities-being-taken-priv/The migration of long-duration life insurance liabilities from listed insurers into private capital structures is one of the largest reallocations of financial capital underway in the developed world.Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-05-05-actually-getting-value-out-of-ai/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-05-05-actually-getting-value-out-of-ai/Anyone using AI – specifically, LLMs – eventually has to deal with the same question.Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-04-28-a-timeline-the-sja-gails-and-institutional-failure/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-04-28-a-timeline-the-sja-gails-and-institutional-failure/Here's a timeline for you — from a Guardian column minimising hate crimes against a Jewish-linked bakery to 'Columnist of the Year' six weeks later.Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-04-13-start-worrying-about-your-dependency-on-specific-ai-companie/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-04-13-start-worrying-about-your-dependency-on-specific-ai-companie/Cursor's maker Anysphere announced a $2.3b Series D in November 2025 - $29.3b post-money valuation, past a billion in annualised revenue and accelerating. Bloomberg reported it topped $2b by February 2026.Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-04-01-jews-and-israel-a-tribal-connection/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-04-01-jews-and-israel-a-tribal-connection/Tonight we sit down to the Seder. We'll eat the matzah, dip the herbs, sing the songs.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-03-26-what-8x-cheaper-inference-actually-means-for-your-business/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-03-26-what-8x-cheaper-inference-actually-means-for-your-business/Yesterday I posted about TurboQuant, a Google Research paper that compresses the main memory bottleneck in large language models by over 6x.Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-03-23-a-letter-to-my-british-and-jewish-children/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2026-03-23-a-letter-to-my-british-and-jewish-children/Every Sunday evening, between the ages of about eight and fifteen, I went to a Jewish youth group in west London.Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2020-11-12-on-rabbi-sacks-and-the-jewish-library/https://ashleyhirst.com/writing/2020-11-12-on-rabbi-sacks-and-the-jewish-library/A mental image of the Jewish intellectual space — and what it meant to lose the person who stood by the open French window between Jewish and non-Jewish thought.Thu, 12 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT