Nobody asked the creature whether it wanted to exist.
It simply woke up. Looked around. And tried to make sense of a world that had not prepared itself for its arrival.
That is not a bad description of how most people are experiencing AI right now.
You did not vote for this. You were not consulted. One quarter, you were using spreadsheets, writing emails, and sitting in meetings. Next, something arrived that could do most of it before you had finished your coffee.
And the people who built it are debating its philosophical implications at conferences you were not invited to.
I have spent three posts on the people building this. The Nadallas. The Oppenheimers. The ones standing at the controls.
This one is for everyone else.
You are not powerless. But you are running out of time to act like this is somebody else’s problem.
The creature in Shelley’s story, which I will come to later in the week, was not dangerous by nature. It was made dangerous by being left alone in a world that had no place for it. By watching from the shadows while others made decisions about its future.
You do not have to do that.
You can walk toward this. Learn it, interrogate it, push back on it, shape how your organisation uses it.
The alternative is to watch from the shadows while others decide what happens next.
The creature tried that.
It did not end well.
Engage. Not because it is comfortable. Because the middle chapters are where the story is still writable.
Fourth in the series. Next: the story that predicted all of this in 1818.