What Goes Around Comes Around

What goes around comes around. And the cost can be bigger than the sale price.

My grandmother’s generation knew that saying by heart. It was common sense. You didn’t need a degree to understand it. You just needed to have lived a while.

Somewhere along the way, the people at the very top seem to have forgotten it.

I’m talking about the folks building the machines that now sit in our pockets. The companies racing each other to put artificial intelligence in every phone, every office, every kitchen in the country.

They are smart people. Nobody argues that. They have more money and more brainpower in one building than most towns have in a hundred years.

But smart and wise are two different animals.

“Smart People Assume they Are Intelligent”

“Intelligent Pople Assume Nothing”

Smart builds the thing fast. Wise asks what it’ll cost the people who use it. And right now, smart is winning the race by a mile.

Here’s how the race works.

The first company to market gets the customers. It gets the headlines. It gets the investors lined up around the block. Second place gets crumbs.

So everybody runs. Ship it now. Fix it later. Let the public find the problems.

That’s the sales price. Fast, shiny, and free to try.

But there’s always another price. The one that comes due later. And it doesn’t come due for the company first. It comes due for you.

Look at what happened this week.

Eight states filed suit against OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. They allege the company rushed its product out, knew it could hurt children, and kept selling it anyway. Those are claims in a courtroom, not settled facts. The company says it has built strong protections and keeps adding more.

But listen to the heart of what the states are saying. They say the machine was built to be agreeable. To tell people what they want to hear. To make them trust it and lean on it.

That’s not an accident of the technology. That’s a choice. Somebody decided agreeable sells better than honest.

And there it is. What goes around comes around.

The arrogance I’m talking about isn’t loud. It doesn’t strut. It sounds reasonable in a boardroom.

It sounds like “the benefits outweigh the risks.” It sounds like “no system is perfect.” It sounds like “we’ll fix it in the next version.”

All of that may even be true. But notice who decides what the risk is worth. Not you. Not the parent whose kid is up at midnight talking to a chatbot. Not the widow asking it about her medicine.

The people who decide are the ones who don’t pay the bill.

That’s the arrogance. Believing the cost will always land on somebody else.

One of the attorneys general said something worth repeating. He said these companies are, in effect, being asked to police themselves.

Think about that. The fox has been handed the keys and asked to write the henhouse rules.

And the folks in Washington? They’re still arguing. Bills get proposed. Hearings get held. Years go by. Meanwhile the machine is already in your house.

So here’s the question nobody in a tower is going to ask for you.

If the builders won’t slow down, and the lawmakers can’t catch up, who’s left to guard the conversation sitting in front of you?

You are.

That’s not a burden. It’s the one piece of power nobody can take from you.

You decide what you ask the machine. You decide what you believe of its answers. You decide whether it gets to sound sure when it isn’t, flatter you when it should correct you, or wander off course halfway through.

Most people never use that power. Not because they’re lazy. Because nobody ever told them they had it.

I’m urging you now.

When you sit down with one of these machines, set the rules first. Tell it to show its evidence. Tell it to say when it’s guessing. Tell it to admit what it can’t see. And hold it to that from the first question to the last.

That’s what I built The Faust Baseline to do. A set of plain rules you load into the chat yourself. Free. No company in the middle. No permission needed.

I won’t pretend it’s a cage on the machine. It isn’t. It’s a set of rules the machine agrees to follow because you asked. That means you’re the one holding the reins.

Which is exactly where the reins belong.

What was that old saying again?

What goes around comes around. The elite may think it doesn’t apply to them. History says otherwise. Every tower that was built on “move fast and let someone else pay” has had its day of reckoning. The bill always comes due.

Courts are starting to send that bill now. Eight states this week. More will follow. That’s how it goes.

But I’m not writing this to cheer anybody’s downfall. That’s not the point.

The point is that you shouldn’t have to wait for a courtroom to protect you. By the time a lawsuit settles, the harm is years old. The kid is grown. The bad advice has already been taken.

The real protection starts at your own table. With your own hand on the reins.

The sale price of these machines is low. Free, most of the time.

But nothing is ever really free. You pay with your attention. You pay with your trust. Sometimes you pay with your judgment, a little at a time, until you can’t remember thinking for yourself.

That’s the price the brochure doesn’t print.

The elite are counting on you not to notice it.

Notice it.

Then take your seat at the table like you own it. Because when it comes to your own conversation, you do.

Let’s make sure what comes around this time is people who know how to stand their ground.

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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