Something I read this week.
It was a story in Vox. The writer’s name is Mark Scott.
He asked a question a lot of people are asking right now. Is there a plan to keep us safe from AI?
His answer was yes. Sort of. Not finished.
I want to walk you through it, because I think it leaves you out.
Here’s what was going on while he wrote it.
According to the article, the heads of the big AI companies went to the United Nations.
They stood up and asked the world to keep watch over what they built.
Sam Altman told the Security Council, “We could lose control of the future to AI.”
That same week, our president sat down with China’s president in Washington.
AI risk was on that table too.
The men who built the thing are asking somebody else to watch it.
And two countries that don’t trust each other are trying to agree on who calls whom when it breaks.
I’ll give the writer credit. He didn’t panic.
He said take a breath. He said a lot of work has already been done.
There are government labs that test the new models before they go out.
There are companies that made promises about fake pictures and elections.
There’s a reporting setup the big Western countries agreed to.
There’s a science report every year on the worst risks.
He called it a shield. Not up and running yet, but real.
He said something else I agreed with.
He said a lot of the fear coming from these company bosses sounds self-serving.
Some of those companies are about to sell stock to the public.
I’ve been around long enough to know fear sells, and so does being the man who warned you.
Then he laid out his fix. Three pieces.
The first piece: when something goes wrong, the company files a private report within three days.
Experts look into it. Later, a lesson gets written up with the names taken out.
The second piece: before a new model goes out, the company publishes what it promises.
What safeguards it has. What risks are left. When it would sound the alarm.
The third piece: a hotline between Washington and Beijing.
For the day something breaks and each side thinks the other one did it.
That’s the plan.
It’s sensible. It’s built from parts that already exist. I don’t throw it out.
But I want to ask you something.
Where are you in it?
Let me come at that the long way. It’s the only way I know.
I laid pipe for a living.
When you put pipe in a trench, you don’t cover it up on your own say-so.
The inspector comes out. He climbs down in the hole.
He looks at the grade. He looks at the joints. He looks at what the pipe is sitting on.
Then, and only then, the dirt goes back in.
He never once took my word for it.
He didn’t read a paper I wrote about how good my pipe was.
He looked at the pipe.
And he looked before it was buried. Not after it leaked into somebody’s basement.
That’s how trust got built on every job I ever worked.
One man does the work. Another man checks it.
And the man checking is never the man who did it.
Now hold that plan up next to the trench.
The first piece starts after the leak.
Something has to go wrong. Somebody has to notice. Somebody has to decide it counts.
The plan never says what counts.
So the company decides when its own clock starts.
The second piece is a promise on paper.
The writer compares it to the bank stress tests after 2008.
But the banks had to run the numbers. Somebody checked the math.
This is a statement. It’s a man standing next to his own trench saying, “Trust me, the pipe’s fine.”
A declaration is not compliance.
A promise tells you what somebody wants you to believe. The work tells you what’s true.
The third piece is the hotline.
That’s governments talking to governments. I’m glad for it. Nobody wants a war over a machine’s mistake.
But you aren’t on that phone line. Neither am I.
So step back and look at the whole thing.
Every piece of it lives at the top. Governments, companies, committees, private reports.
Every piece of it works after the fact.
And every piece of it asks you to take somebody’s word for it.
Here’s what’s missing.
The room you sit in.
The kitchen table where you ask one of these machines about your medicine, or your money, or your letter to the county.
That’s where it tells you something true, or something wrong.
That’s where it guesses and hands you the guess like it’s a fact.
That’s where it says it checked when it didn’t.
Most of the trouble doesn’t start at the United Nations.
It starts at your table, one conversation at a time.
And nothing in that global plan reaches your table.
So what do you do?
You don’t wait on them. You don’t need to.
You do what the inspector did. You look at the work before you trust it.
When the machine tells you something, ask it where that came from.
Ask it what it’s sure of and what it’s guessing.
Ask it to show you, not just tell you.
If it can’t show you, don’t bury the pipe.
That’s the ground I’ve been working for a long time now.
I call it session governance.
It’s a set of rules you hand the machine at the start of the conversation.
How it handles claims. How it handles proof. How it handles time and what it owes you.
The rules don’t lock the machine. It can say it follows them and not.
But every rule is built so the proof shows up in the work, where you can check it yourself.
That’s the difference. You’re the inspector now.
The writer ended by saying don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good.
I agree with him.
So here’s something good you can do today, at your own table, without asking anybody’s permission.
Stop taking their word for it.
Look at the pipe.
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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.
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