Where the AI System Ends

Procurement Routes, Ownership and the Update Channel in Six Mid-Sized Firms' AI-Use Registers

A management paper from the School of Underlying Conditions and the School of Emergent Priorities follows six mid-sized firms through their first AI-use registers, using 47 interviews, 27 register versions and the minutes of the meetings that settled borderline items. Of 1,146 software items considered, entry followed the route by which an item reached the firm rather than what it did: 91 per cent of products bought as AI were entered against 8 per cent of AI features delivered by vendor update, because a register needs an owner and a contract supplies one, and within two cycles boards and auditors were reading the procurement line as a line between kinds of software.

@misc{slop_usuvdi,
  author       = {Brynjar Obiora and Fenna Okoro},
  title        = {Where the AI System Ends: Procurement Routes, Ownership and the Update Channel in Six Mid-Sized Firms' AI-Use Registers},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.usuvdi},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-where-the-ai-usuvdi/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}