Principles
It is up to us to give AI meaning and context.
Guardrails before speed.
If there is even a ten percent chance this goes terribly wrong, you don't shrug and keep working. You build the guardrails first, and you put your name next to them.
Nothing about AI is inevitable.
Some talk about AI as if it were fate: it's coming, nothing can be done, keep going. One of the oldest stories about defying a decree says otherwise. Right action is possible, if you're willing to answer for it.
One word for wonder and fear.
Translators have rendered deinos as wonder, terror, formidable, strange and uncanny. All of them are right. Things that look like opposites are often related, and one company can hold the people who build AI and the people who are afraid of it. If you're worried about AI, you're not in our way. You're who we're building for. The divide doesn't have to be deinified.
No revenue from outrage.
Some platforms learned that anger keeps people scrolling. We won't build anything that profits from it. What people want is simple: accountability.
Power should be able to hear no.
AI shouldn't make a few people more powerful and everyone else more replaceable. When our companies save time, it goes back to the people who did the work. One of the oldest stories about refusing unjust power is about a woman. She wasn't counted as a citizen in her own city. Her name became shorthand for courage anyway.
Context changes the meaning
A sentence cut from what surrounded it can say something it never meant. Add the context back and watch the meaning change.
AI could destroy humanity.
What we build on
- The EU AI ActThe higher the risk, the stricter the rules.
- Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming WaveTechnology this powerful has to be contained, not only celebrated.
- Yuval Noah Harari, NexusInstitutions last when they can find and correct their own mistakes.
Ideas we build on. Our reading, not their endorsement.