Either side of a decision. Never the decision.
Noxia is an AI consultancy in Edinburgh, helping businesses here and across Scotland optimise with AI. We build AI agents for the work either side of a decision: the enquiry, the chase, the first draft, the pack.
The line
Where a person takes over.
Every offer names the point at which the agent stops and a person decides. It is written before the build, and the record shows the agent stopping there.
If an agent could safely give the advice, you would not need the firm. The reason the work is worth doing is exactly the reason the scope is narrow.
- Enquiry handling What stays human The moment it stops being logistics. A question about price, suitability, a complaint, or anyone distressed.
- Document chasing What stays human Judging whether what arrived is acceptable. Every conversation that is not “where do I send this”.
- First-draft writing What stays human The assessment itself. The author challenges the draft, changes what is wrong, and owns the file, and the record shows what they changed, which is the evidence a file check actually wants.
- Pack and case assembly What stays human The submission decision, and every judgement the recipient’s underwriter asks for.
- Knowledge that cites itself What stays human Deciding what to do with the answer. The system retrieves; it does not advise.
- The audit layer What stays human Everything the records are about. This offer does not act; it makes acting defensible.
What this site will not print
Four things, on purpose.
Each would make the site easier to write, and harder to trust.
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A figure without its source
Every number on the site names who published it, how much weight it carries and the day it was read. 485 sources so far, each with a date it is due to be read again.
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A figure we got wrong, quietly mended
31 have been struck or corrected so far. Each stays on the register with what was wrong with it, and has an address of its own so it can be cited.
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A client, a testimonial or a result
None is printed until it is real and we have permission to print it. A case study written in advance of the case is an advert.
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A price we have not set
The site gives the shape of every price, never a number or a range we have not written down. The quote comes after Discover.
The mark
A thistle, made of light.
The thistle is Scotland’s national flower. In the mark its head is silk ribbons, twisting from violet at the neck into blue and then ice at the tip, and the tuft fans out above it in purple strands. On screen it moves: the ribbons turn slowly round the stem, light runs down them to the tip, and the tuft sways as if in moving air.
Rooted in Edinburgh, working with new tools, and careful with both. Thistles are famously prickly about careless handling. So are we, about figures.
Why Edinburgh
AI research began here in 1963.
We are not part of that history. We work in the city where it happened, and we try to bring one of its habits into ordinary offices: test the claim before you believe it.
“Edinburgh is the birthplace of AI in Europe.”
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1614
Napier’s logarithms
John Napier, born at Merchiston Castle in Edinburgh, publishes logarithms: a way to turn hard multiplication into easy addition. Arguably the first great time-saving algorithm.
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1831
Maxwell is born
James Clerk Maxwell is born at 14 India Street. His equations for electricity and magnetism sit underneath every chip that runs a model today.
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1963
AI research begins
Donald Michie sets up a small AI research group at Hope Park Square. It becomes the Experimental Programming Unit in 1965.
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1966
Machine Intelligence
The University forms the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception.
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1973
FREDDY II builds a toy car
Using a camera, Edinburgh’s FREDDY II robot assembles a toy car and boat from a jumbled heap of parts. It takes about 16 hours. You can see it at the National Museum of Scotland.
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1974
Department of AI
The Department of Artificial Intelligence is formed. In 1998 it becomes part of the new School of Informatics.
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2014
The Data Lab
Scotland’s innovation centre for data and AI is founded, hosted by the University of Edinburgh.
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2018
The Bayes Centre
A home for data science and AI opens on Potterrow, part of a city-region push to make Edinburgh a data capital.
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2026
A national supercomputer
Construction begins on the UK’s national supercomputer at Edinburgh, and Scotland publishes its AI Strategy for 2026 to 2031.
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One job, named. Tell us which.
If this describes a job in your week, that is where every engagement starts: one job, named before we quote, with a record of every step.