Tea and Tech Podcast

We talk about guardrails all the time in artificial intelligence.
Put guardrails around the model.Put guardrails around the data.Put guardrails around what the system can do.
And generally, I'm in favour of them.
But this week, something happened that made me realize there is a question underneath all of that safety language that we don't ask nearly enough:
Who gave the guardrail authority?

In 2024, the AI company Anthropic began an internal operation called Project Panama. Court records later revealed that the company purchased millions of second-hand books in large batches. The bindings were removed, the pages were scanned at industrial scale and the remains were sent for recycling.
 
(The factual backbone is supported by the Bartz v. Anthropic court order⁠, the U.S. Copyright Office’s fair-use guidance⁠, the Washington Post’s Project Panama investigation⁠, the Guardian’s reporting on rare-bookseller concerns⁠, and Canada’s Copyright Act provisions on fair dealing⁠.)

Last season, we spent time exploring RAI - Relational Abundant Intelligence - and the idea that our future with artificial intelligence cannot be built only around capability….It must also be built around relationship.
Around trust, around responsibility….and around the human beings affected by the systems we create.
This season, I want to move that conversation into governance.
Not governance as a pile of policies sitting unread in a shared drive.
Not governance as a department that is brought in at the end of a project to approve a checklist.
And not governance as an attempt to slow innovation down.
I mean governance as the architecture that makes responsible innovation possible.

Relational Abundant Intelligence....
Because when we say Relational Abundant Intelligence, we are making a statement that relationship—not intelligence itself—should be the organizing principle.
And that is a subtle but very profound shift.
Most of the conversation today is framed as a relationship between two separate categories:
Artificial intelligence and human intelligence.  But what if...

I don't worry that AI will become more human. I worry that it will become an increasingly accurate reflection of us. And if that's true... then perhaps the most important governance decision we'll ever make isn't about the technology. It's about the culture we build around it

So maybe the question for this next era is not only, “Can we build more intelligent machines?”
Maybe it is, “Can we build more humane conditions around intelligent machines?”
Can we design systems that reduce unnecessary cognitive load instead of adding to it?
Can we create information environments that help people orient rather than spiral?
Can leaders communicate with enough clarity that people do not have to decode every decision like it is an ancient riddle with budget implications?

We’ve talked about the messy middle - that space where technology is advancing faster than the structures around it.
But the messy middle isn’t just technical. It’s emotional.
People are trying to understand what AI means for their work…their identity… their place in the world.
And when those questions don’t have clear answers… people don’t reach for frameworks first. They reach for a feeling.
They want to feel… safe.
They want to feel… held.
And maybe most importantly…
They want to feel like things are… enough.

One of the risks I keep coming back to is decision distance.The further away decision-makers are from the people affected by their systems, the easier it becomes to abstract harm.
A system may look efficient from a boardroom.It may look profitable on a dashboard.It may look scalable in an investor deck.
But what does it feel like to the person downstream of that decision?

When a technology becomes too big, too complex, or too fast for society to fully process… we simplify it.
And the easiest way to simplify something complex… is to give it a face.  We’ve done this before as a society …. With nuclear science.With the early internet. With social media…. the list is long
One person becomes the shorthand for an entire system.
Not because they control everything — but because our brains prefer stories over systems...and let’s be honest - It’s easier to understand a person… than it is to understand a global infrastructure.
But … here’s the catch. 
When we reduce systems to individual people… we start misplacing responsibility.
 
 
 
 

Let's explore what I call the "AI Perfection Paradox" - and why the real question isn’t whether AI is perfect.It’s what environments we build around it.Shape the environment.Shape the outcome.