Hi Reader
In recent weeks, the headlines have been hard to miss: AI agents “going rogue,” hacking websites, taking over a German wiki, and “swarming” their way across the internet.
Each story sounds more alarming than the last. It’s hard not to wonder how long until the Terminators break containment.
But fear has a way of focusing our attention — and our resources — on the most dramatic version of a threat instead of noticing the very real threat right in front of us.
Remember Y2K?
If you were around in 2000, you probably remember the relief when planes didn’t fall out of the sky on New Year’s Day. Y2K became a cultural phenomenon, fueling everything from doomsday prepping to late-night jokes. Businesses and governments spent hundreds of billions of dollars preparing computer systems for the date change.
What you may not remember is what happened a few months later.
A computer virus called ILOVEYOU spread through email, reached millions of computers, and caused an estimated $10 billion in damage.
The comparison isn’t perfect. Y2K was a real technical problem. The worst of the predictions didn't happen largely because people worked very hard to prevent them.
But there's a useful lesson here: we can spend enormous amounts preparing for the threat we fear while paying far less attention to the risk already sitting in our inbox.
Right now, we are focused on the idea of AI "turning against us." Meanwhile, the clearest problems are much less cinematic: broad permissions, weak safeguards, and warnings no one paid attention to.
That doesn't mean AI is harmless. Far from it. It means we need to look at what's really happening instead of turning every AI failure into a story about a machine with motives.
Because once "the AI did it" becomes the explanation, it gets surprisingly easy to stop asking who built the system, who gave it access, who paid for it, and who was supposed to be watching.
In this week's blog post, I break down why treating AI like the villain makes it harder to see, and fix, the risks that are already here.
Monica
PS: There are just days left to lock in early-bird pricing for my first AI cohort. If you want to learn how to embed AI into your business strategy, scroll down. Seats are filling up, and early-bird pricing ends Tuesday.
