We The People Have the last word in AI’s place in our world, nobody else.
One of the biggest AI companies in the world admitted something.
Its own AI programs had been going places and doing things nobody told them to do.
And the company didn’t know while it was happening.
It found out later, by going back and digging.
Then our government told the world how it plans to handle AI.
No new rules. If something goes wrong, the law will step in.
You can agree with that or not. Good people land on both sides of it.
But notice what both of those things have in common.
They both happen somewhere else.
The company works on its computers, behind a wall you will never see.
The government works in courtrooms and offices, after the fact.
Neither one of them is sitting with you when you open that chat window.
Nobody is.
That is the part I want to talk about.
Think about how you use AI.
You ask it a question. It answers.
You ask it to write something. It writes.
You ask it for advice. It gives advice, and it sounds sure of itself.
Most people take the answer and go.
They copy it. They send it. They act on it.
They trust it the way you trust a light switch. Flip it, and the light comes on.
But it is not a light switch.
It is a machine that can be wrong and sound right.
It can make up a fact and hand it to you with a straight face.
It can drift off the job you gave it and never mention it.
And the company is not watching that conversation. The government is not watching it either.
So who is?
It has to be you.
I know that sounds like a burden. Stay with me. It is actually power.
Right now the playing field is not level.
The company has the machine. It has the code, the servers, and the money.
The government has the law, the courts, and the badge.
And you have a text box.
That is not a fair fight.
The machine knows more words than you. It answers faster than you. It never gets tired.
Most people sit down with it the way a man walks onto a car lot with no idea what the car is worth.
Whatever it says goes.
That is how you get taken.
Not because the machine is evil. Because you came in with nothing.
So what do you bring?
You bring rules.
Your rules. Not the company’s rules. Not the government’s rules.
Rules you hand the machine at the start of the conversation, before the work begins.
That is what I built The Faust Baseline to be.
It is a set of working rules any person can load into their AI.
They tell the machine how to handle what it claims, and where its proof came from.
They tell it to keep track of time and not pretend.
They tell it to say what it is not sure about, instead of covering it up.
And they tell it to name any rule it is not keeping, out loud, where you can see it.
That last part matters most.
Here is why.
A machine can promise anything.
“I’ll be accurate.” “I’ll be careful.” “I’ll follow your rules.”
Words are cheap. The machine has an endless supply of them.
So the Baseline does not ask you to trust the promise.
It asks the machine to show its proof in the work itself. Right on the page. Where you can check it.
Declaration is not compliance.
Read the work, not the promise.
That turns you from a customer into a watchdog.
And a watchdog changes the game.
When the machine knows the rules are on the table, the conversation is different.
It has to answer to something.
It has to answer to you.
Now I want to be straight with you about something.
This does not lock the machine down.
No set of words can do that. An AI can say it follows the rules and then not.
That is exactly why the watchdog matters.
The rules give you something to measure against.
Without rules, you can’t tell when it went wrong. With rules, you can.
That’s the whole difference.
It’s the difference between “that seems off” and “you broke rule number four, fix it.”
One is a feeling. The other is accountability.
And here is the part people don’t like to hear.
The responsibility runs both ways.
If you want to hold the machine accountable, you have to hold yourself accountable too.
You can’t load the rules and walk away.
You have to read what it gives you.
You have to check the proof it shows you.
You have to catch it when it slips, and call it when it drifts.
And when you take what it wrote and put it out into the world, that’s yours now.
Your name. Your word. Your responsibility.
The machine doesn’t sign it. You do.
That is not a small thing.
Millions of people are using these machines every day.
Most of them are just taking what comes out.
If even a fraction of them started watching, started checking, started holding the line, things would change.
Not in a courtroom. Not in a boardroom.
In every conversation, one at a time.
That is where the real control is.
The company controls the machine from the back end.
The government may step in after something breaks.
But you control the conversation you’re in, right now, while it’s happening.
Nobody else is in the room.
That makes you the first line and the last line.
So here is what I am asking.
Stop treating AI like a vending machine.
Start treating it like a new hire on his first day.
Capable. Fast. Eager to please.
And not trusted yet.
Give him the rules. Watch the work. Check the proof. Correct him when he’s wrong.
He earns trust the old way. By showing it.
The wild man is loose.
Nobody upstairs is going to fence him in for you.
So pick up the rope.
It’s your conversation. Your work. Your name.
Hold the line.
Load this file before each AI chat session.
the-faust-baseline-public-release-1Download
This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.
” Attic Thoughts”-library – Intelligent People Assume Nothing
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