I Keep Shaking My Head at the AI Conversation

So, after a week or so of fear being spread about how AI will kill us all, we do in fact have Anthropic's latest release, Opus 5.5, released only a few hours ago and performing around the level of Fable 5.1 on most work. It is also cheaper to run than its predecessor.

Oh, and soon we shall probably start hearing the words “Super Intelligence” more often, and perhaps less of AI, or SI instead. President Trump said at the United Nations General Assembly today that US government documents would use “Super Intelligence (SI)” rather than “Artificial Intelligence (AI).”

Law drafters may really have to become fast-paced when it comes to updating regulations around the use of these systems. Hmm.

But outside of all this, and this is my own opinion of course, I have always thought that some of the fear being created around AI has more to do with humans intentionally not putting proper guardrails around agents, letting them run amok, and then turning around to say, “They hacked this,” or “They did that.” Every time I saw one of those headlines, I would shake my head because of the framing.

See, what exactly did we give the agent permission to do? What systems did we connect it to? What did we allow it to access? What guardrails did we put around it? What happened when we took those guardrails off? Then I heard the Nvidia CEO, in paraphrase, seeming to disagree with the prevailing fear narrative, and I understood him a lot and I am certain that, that is the space many of us who actually build these systems live in.

I have heard people ask me, “Won't AI, (or to use the latest coined word from Trump at the UN - Super Intelligence), eventually run out our water reserves?” As a Christian, my first thought goes somewhere else. I immediately think, have these people considered a God who would not allow humanity to destroy itself into complete obliteration unless it were time? Maybe they have not. Almost immediately after that thought, I give them the practical explanation: 'Look at what Sam Altman himself has said about how much water a data centre actually uses. Look at the numbers and the context.'

And I continue shaking my head. Stay with me. See, the head shaking has very little to do with their questions. It is more to do with why good stewards of AI seem so silent. Or maybe they are not silent. Maybe, bad news travels faster than good news in this new world. Because while the fear is spreading, the same teams are still working underneath it all. They are developing, testing and iterating. They are creating new systems every hour that will change the way their side of the world works.

Elon Musk has autonomous Cybercabs already on roads. That is not a conversation about what might happen one day. It is already happening. And then there is the world (a clip was played on news today) he has been talking about building around increasingly capable intelligence. Eh, hmmm as we say in Uganda. See, I find that part interesting too.

Perhaps this is also why I do not immediately dismiss Trump's shift from “artificial intelligence” to “super intelligence.” I actually think there is something positive in the idea of changing the language, even if I am not necessarily agreeing with everything surrounding the statement. There may be something worth examining in why the word “super” feels more appropriate to some people building these systems than “artificial.”

Maybe biophysicists, biochemists and others working at the intersection of intelligence, biology and computation will eventually help us understand some of that thinking much better than the rest of us can today...

And yet, despite all the fear narrative, you will see that every other day, I choose to come on my socials and speak about what I do. LEX by HerDelight that is - LegalTech. And, the AI (SI) systems we build at HERDelight Echoes. I do it because I have seen the change these systems can create inside a business. I have seen how quickly humans adapt when they receive a service that genuinely helps them. I have seen people move from wondering whether an AI system can do something to expecting it to do the work. I have seen human teams collaborate with these systems beautifully when they no longer fear them.

Humans do adapt.

Give someone a system that actually answers their enquiries, helps them find information, speaks their language, follows up with them, works after hours and makes their experience better, and very quickly the question becomes less about whether the machine is intelligent and more about whether the service is useful. People want to be served and businesses want work done, fast, efficiently, around the clock.

This next one I say it carefully - Teams at work, want help. They want help ONLY and ONLY if they team leads explain and create a shift in how their teams view an AI system. If no narrative of help is created, teams adapt quickly to fear and this can very much turn into sabotage.

The most important part and the one I find very beautiful - Clients want to feel seen, valued, heard and taken as the most important to the business anytime they approach the business.

All the above, is the part that gets lost when the entire conversation becomes about whether AI will kill us all. It is unfortunate because some of the same teams spreading the fear are also working incredibly hard to build what comes next. Trust me, they are not stopping. They are developing and developing and developing. They are creating systems that will help their side of the world while much of the rest of the world is being left to sit in fear of what is coming.

And that is why I keep asking: where the good news is. Where are the good stewards of AI?

Where are the people building carefully, putting boundaries around what their systems can do, testing them, learning from what goes wrong and then going back to improve them?

Maybe they are speaking. Maybe we just do not hear them because bad news travels faster.

I cannot believe I am saying this, but even when Trump said that whoever wins in AI will rule, I found myself agreeing and thinking about the people around him who understand what is actually being built. Because surely there are people around every major power who know that this is no longer just about chatbots. It is now about systems, agents and or machines that can reason, act, move through the physical world and increasingly work alongside humans.

And there is another thing I keep thinking about. There is a reason why some countries, particularly in Asia, seem to be quietly building and adapting. It could be because their people understand that this AI/SI world is here whether they are emotionally ready for it or not. Perhaps they have decided that adapting to it is more useful than spending all their time being afraid of it. I do not know am just thinking.

On my end, I am watching and I also know what I have seen with my own eyes. That is, I have seen businesses change when they begin working with intelligent systems, I have seen humans adapt, I have seen teams collaborate and I have seen that the question people eventually ask is not, “Is this machine intelligent?” It is, “What can it do for me to give me an edge and to help make sure each client feels heard, seen and valued?”

The conversation we need is not one that ignores the risks. I agree, we need guardrails. Most importantly, we need people who understand what these systems can actually do before sitting at the table and writing laws about them. We need builders who understand that more autonomy also means more responsibility.

We also need something else: To stop allowing fear to become the only story being told about a technology that is already changing how people work, serve, learn, build and live.

Because while everyone is asking whether Super Intelligence is coming, some of us are already building with it. And some of us are watching humans adapt to it much faster than we expected.

I am one of them, so I will keep building.

And I will keep watching what happens next.