AI Communities
We’re going to need a bigger boat
I spent the weekend immersed in the AI communities of Reddit and Discord. I’ve come back a changed man. Now, for context, I read and contribute to the debate on LinkedIn and elsewhere on the impact of AI in the regulated industries daily. I’m in one of the little coloured dots of users in the tiny corner of that chart of AI world wide usage who have LLM’s installed. I’ve built an agent or two. I have “embedded AI workflows” into my everyday work. Some of them have even made my job easier.
I say this by way of explanation. Its my job. Here at CattleGrid we’re building a toll that’s at the intersection of governance and technology, AI technology specifically. Fingers on the pulse. However at the moment that pulse is racing. The rate of change is astonishing.
The usually staid commentary of the corporate world is buzzing with enthusiasm tempered with some measure of alarm; From a VP at Meta getting her inbox wiped by a rogue openclaw instruction through to the kill chains in the American attacks on Iran AI is the debate everyone’s having. And its the thing everyone’d doing. When you see stories about Accenture struggling to incentivise their senior managers to use their AI tools you know AI is just so hot right now.
Different story on Discord and Reddit. These communities are building up and out at an alarming rate, built on the lies of Anthropic using its own LLMs to build int next LLMS , so to hiveminds of the global developer community are rushing to their prompts. It is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time to dip into those foaming waters.
We cant close the beach now, if even we wanted to. But we do need to draw breath. While this unparalleled degree of activity starts to build up momentum let’s also realise that this community work is a demonstration of the speed, opportunity and challenge and not the challenge itself in the majority of cases. It brings light but not necessarily heat to the campfire.
Listening to the corporate technical community its clear that the world of work is now in the sights of the AI giants. It carries some memory of the RPA push of what seems like a lifetime ago, and indeed the two workflows share more similarities than I think the likes of Anthropic would like to let on, but this does have the all important momentum it seems now, AI is in the Overton window, and with a smartphone in their hand the general public are paddling in the shallows in a way they never were with RPA. Technology in the hand and home leaches into the workplace, it forces change, and whilst I see the 85% numbers of AI embedded SMEs in the workplace as weirdly high, it is now an everyday occurrence for most white collar workers in some regard.
How then need a CISO respond to this. as I said, you cant close the beach now. The government is trying as best a technocratic wonkocracy can be to be boosterish about the promise of AI but meanwhile looming in the distance is the impending enaction of the EUAI Act and the associated implications for fines and associated impacts.
There’s a tendency in this country to lament red tape, especially Brussels red tape, but whatever your persuasion its clear that GDPR and legislation protecting the rights of the individual in a data economy have been implemented in this country far more effectively than anything since decimalisation. The EU Act will be another factor that organisations bringing AI in will need to consider, but to my mind there’s something they need to do first. To draw breath, and to look at the wider aims of the business to begin to trace out where AI has, can and will be interwoven into business practice. that will shine a light on where it overlaps protected or sensitive data -and thereby will it act as a cataract or a logjam.
The how is important as it gives a perspective on how controls should be implemented, where controls could be implemented to best support the process as well as aiding compliance. Red tape snarls up the system when its not woven consciously into the system. AI tooling without its speed, its ability to evolve and innovate isn’t an improvement. doing this well and channelling its flow supports both a compliant set of workstreams and acts as a catalyst for innovation. It supports employee engagement, it drives productivity and it satisfies board nervousness without turning away the enthusiastic adoption. Agile controls built with new conformities, that understand the world of work has changed and operate withing a innovative mindset will be the modes of future governance that ensure businesses can thrive in a fast moving and compliant framework
