Thomas Tornatore on AI and governance
When AI goes wrong, it is usually by default, not design.
Each edition traces one real case to the decision nobody owned, and what to check in yours.
Latest edition
Ownership & accountability
Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia's CEO. The headlines are about his personal life. The useful question is who was paying for the AI boom, and what happens when the person signing the checks leaves.
Read the essay
I denied a notetaker and received the transcript anyway. The person who can start the recording is not necessarily the person who can stop it.
The time AI saves is being spent. Rarely by a decision anyone can point to.
When a decision goes wrong, the person who made it is often the first thing to disappear. They disappear from the sentence before they disappear from anything else.
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Start with the question closest to your work.
Explore a case
In The Notetaker Nobody Invited, I describe two meetings where attempts to stop a notetaker failed. Follow the story in four parts.
I was hosting a meeting when an attendee tried to add an AI notetaker. I denied it entry, and none appeared in the participant list. Afterward, an automated email delivered a recording, transcript, and summary. I could not establish how the meeting had been captured.
In another meeting, participants removed a notetaker after it posted a recording notice. About two minutes later, it returned. The account holder tried to stop it, then left the call. The notetaker stayed. We had to end the meeting.
The essay uses a hypothetical example: a patient describes a symptom while a clinician records with a notetaker, without asking. The clinician chooses the account and its terms. The patient's words still go to a third party. Fixing the setup later cannot undo that disclosure.
The organization needs to decide which notetakers may be used, for which conversations, and who can approve an exception. It must also test whether the host and account holder can stop recording. If they cannot, there needs to be an agreed next step, including who can end the meeting.
Who writes it
I write about how decisions become defaults, who inherits their consequences, and what it takes to own them on purpose.
About Thomas and the publication
