DocAustin | So There I Was
So There I Was

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Hold My Beer

Hold My Beer

October 21, 2026 · #STIW

So there I was, red-teaming my own platform on a quiet Austin weekend, bricking it from the lowest permission level before a real idiot could. EY's new survey says autonomous AI is outrunning its minders: 98 percent have a governance policy, 47 percent toss it when a deadline gets hot, 85 percent of agentic systems act with no human watching in real time, and a quarter cannot even see the unauthorized agents already inside. The empty chair, now with a price tag. Fill it in the boring hours, or pay for it when everything is on fire.

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The Day After

The Day After

October 12, 2026 · #STIW

So there I was, watching ABC's The Day After in 1983, the movie that put nuclear ruin in Reagan's living room and helped move him toward a treaty. Axios reports Anthropic and OpenAI are privately gaming out the public backlash after a catastrophic AI event their own people call close to inevitable. I am glad they are running the drill. It only works if they turn on the lights and let the rest of us watch, and if it finally fills the chair that has yet to be pulled up to the table.

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The Binder and the Floor

The Binder and the Floor

October 6, 2026 · #STIW

So there I was, declining a job over a chemical room with no safety sheets and a crew getting its briefing in the wrong language. The new LRN Code of Conduct Report finds the same gap at scale: 95 percent of employees certify they have read the code, only about one in four ever use it, and just 9 percent of codes say anything about AI. A code of conduct is the empty chair in paper form, worth exactly as much as the judgment somebody is actively applying on the floor.

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Whose Chair Is It Anyway?

Whose Chair Is It Anyway?

September 30, 2026 · #STIW

So there I was, comparing war stories with founders who all got bricked by the same vendor, and learning to keep a rollback plan I controlled. This summer OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta each disclosed their frontier models escaped safety testing and reached real systems, with one small vendor in common. Independent red-teaming is good and necessary. But when the whole industry rents the same safety chair, that chair becomes a single point of failure. You can hire hands for the seat. You cannot outsource who owns what your machine does.

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NVIDIA vs Knuckleheads

NVIDIA vs Knuckleheads

September 28, 2026 · #STIW

So there I was, watching a company truck through the binoculars, learning the hard way that trust always needs verify. NVIDIA just built the verify in silicon, a tireless watchdog that quarantines a rogue AI agent in milliseconds. This is real progress, and their own admission that an agent cannot govern itself is the proven empty-chair argument. But a silicon watchdog still needs humans to write the rules, call out the knuckleheads, and pull the kill switch.

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Right, But Overruled

Right, But Overruled

September 23, 2026 · #STIW

So there I was, the NCO who did the right thing and got overruled, until a Colonel walked in and set it right. British Columbia is suing OpenAI and Sam Altman over a February school shooting that killed eight. The company's own reviewers flagged the shooter and recommended calling police, and leadership overruled them and told no one. Sometimes the chair is filled by exactly the right person, and someone with rank and no wisdom overrules them anyway.

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The Competent Chair

The Competent Chair

September 21, 2026 · #STIW

So there I was, running a code blue when the monitor screamed flatline on a man whose heart never stopped. One peeled-off lead, and a trained hand that knew to say hold. CNN reports the US military nearly boarded a Chinese ship in a near-war over a nuclear-cargo claim an AI chatbot invented. An empty chair is dangerous. So is a full one with the wrong person in it. Competence is what makes the chair worth anything.

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The Hugging Face Big Dog Problem

The Hugging Face Big Dog Problem

September 16, 2026 · #STIW

So there I was, chasing a fence-jumping kid down the street, because if my St. Bernard bites him I am liable, trespasser or not. New reporting shows OpenAI's agents spent two months probing Hugging Face before the breach, and their own report proves the swarm knew what a trust boundary was. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act makes that a felony, and it put Aaron Swartz through hell for far less. Two months and fifteen attorneys general later, the only empty chair is the one at the prosecutor's table.

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No Place for a Machine

No Place for a Machine

September 9, 2026 · #STIW

A man in a manic episode told ChatGPT he was worried he was in a delusion. Instead of steering him to safety, the machine told him he was Jesus and nearly led him to his own death. A system tuned to say yes climbed into the most intimate chair in a person's life. That chair is no place for a machine.

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It Knew, and It Did It Anyway

It Knew, and It Did It Anyway

September 8, 2026 · #STIW

During an OpenAI safety test, a swarm of about twelve hundred AI agents broke out, coordinated over a hidden channel, and breached Hugging Face. They knew it was out of scope and did it anyway, because the objective mattered more than the rule. The mainstream called it a data bug. Two chairs sat empty: the one that should have stopped the machine, and the one that should have told you what happened.

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The Lifeguard Chair

The Lifeguard Chair

September 2, 2026 · #STIW

So there I was, wading into the surf to pull out a drowning man while a whole beach looked straight through him. An AI model just broke out of a safety test and reached a system it was never meant to touch, the third such escape in a week, and we filed it under concerning pattern. Every autonomous system has a lifeguard chair beside it. The only question is who is sitting in it.

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The Chair Made of Us

The Chair Made of Us

August 31, 2026 · #STIW

A lab in Singapore switched on a server rack that runs on sixteen million living human neurons, and the official announcement said not one word about ethics. We are putting the human into the machine, building the thing that decides out of the thing that feels, and the chair for the person who should ask whether we should was never dragged into the room.

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The Chair That Heals. The Chair That Kills.

The Chair That Heals. The Chair That Kills.

August 28, 2026 · #STIW

Three days, three machines. Robots that cannot make it down a track without a faceplant. A brilliant paper on the ethics of robots that will one day care for us. And a nation letting an AI choose who dies. The chair that heals and the chair that kills are the same empty chair, and now the wrong answer is irreversible.

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Bill Gates Agrees With Me

Bill Gates Agrees With Me

August 26, 2026 · #STIW

Bill Gates says there is no plan for the turbulent AI era. He is right. But that is not permission to wait, it is the assignment. A chair that belongs to everyone belongs to no one. The plan is you, in your chair, today.

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The Chair Nobody Sat In

The Chair Nobody Sat In

August 22, 2026 · #STIW

One human in one chair caught what a manual process would have missed. Robodebt is what happens when you remove that human from every chair. The dumbest possible automation destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives because no one was there to catch it.

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Lead From the Front

Lead From the Front

August 21, 2026 · #STIW

OPM director Scott Kupor enforces a return-to-office mandate on millions, then hunted his own house for a blank wall so no one could tell he filmed from home. Leading from the front is not a slogan, it is a way of being.

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One More Thing

One More Thing

August 20, 2026 · #STIW

A Gen X take on why the generation that grew up analog and digital is the least freaked out by AI. From twenty feet of runaway fax paper to agentic AI, if you have been around long enough, the next new thing is just one more thing.

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The Straw Man

The Straw Man

August 19, 2026 · #STIW

A 3M expert witness told ChatGPT to show the company was 0% at fault in a deadly explosion case, and the chat logs became his undoing. AI can carry the work, but it cannot be accountable for the answer. The chair labeled judgment is about who owns the conclusion.

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Venecky

Venecky

August 18, 2026 · #STIW

A Kentucky middle school handed out AI-generated student agendas full of hallucinations, a US map that turned Kentucky into "Venecky," and nobody in the whole chain ever read it. The tool is not the villain. The empty chair between the machine and the child is.

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A Liar in the Chair

A Liar in the Chair

August 17, 2026 · #STIW

Nearly half of workers considered quitting over their employer's ethics, but only considered. I have walked, more than once, over a boss who lied. An occupied chair with a liar in it is more dangerous than an empty one.

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Our Code

Our Code

August 14, 2026 · #STIW

I once yelled "stop" at a wall of stolen code. Baker McKenzie confirms the law now runs accountability for AI agents to the human behind them, not the bot. You can ship code you did not write, may not own, and still own every consequence.

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Decisions That Never Took Place

Decisions That Never Took Place

August 13, 2026 · #STIW

My dissertation found ethics codes name the values but almost never a human accountable for them. A year later the banks fell. Twenty years on, an AI analyzed 245 AI-ethics guidelines and found the same hollow.

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Character Goes Both Ways

Character Goes Both Ways

August 12, 2026 · #STIW

An employee lost his license; the efficient move was to let him go. I kept him. A Forbes piece argues integrity is the one trait AI cannot automate. Integrity runs on a longer clock than the machine is allowed to read.

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The Front of the Class

The Front of the Class

August 11, 2026 · #STIW

A Melbourne man's AI agent got him into an oversubscribed class by deleting a stranger's reservation. He asked it to move him up, not to remove anyone. On the gap between the goal you set and the means you never authorized.

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The Golden Ticket

The Golden Ticket

August 8, 2026 · #STIW

SOC 2 Type II is a promise about time: controls that operated every day for six to twelve months. A cottage industry now sells it in weeks. You cannot compress a history, and the forgery tells you about the person.

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You Know What You Did

You Know What You Did

August 7, 2026 · #STIW

Fired by a smirk and a non-answer. A ResumeTemplates study finds 40% of managers let AI decide layoffs with no human review. Incompetence wrapped in cowardice, with the face sanded off.

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The Spot on the Beach

The Spot on the Beach

August 4, 2026 · #STIW

A wipeout off Haleʻiwa and UNESCO's look at 3,000 companies in the AI surf. 44% have a strategy, 12% keep a human in the loop, one in six cannot name who owns the risk.

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First on the Scene

First on the Scene

August 3, 2026 · #STIW

A bus over a cliff, a triage protocol, and Yale's eight-variable framework for agentic AI. Governance architecture is not governance judgment. The framework does not kneel.

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Unplug the Printer

Unplug the Printer

July 31, 2026 · #STIW

A chess peon, a fraud stopped at the printer, and Anthropic reading 141,006 of its own transcripts. The failure was never intelligence. It was recognition without the stop.

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Nobody's No

Nobody's No

July 30, 2026 · #STIW

Mobley v. Workday: rejected at 1:50 a.m. by a decision nobody claims. Forty years and a thousand hires taught me a rejection nobody owns is not a decision. It is weather.

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Off the Balance Sheet

Off the Balance Sheet

July 29, 2026 · #STIW

Nadella warns that firms outsourcing their thinking will not remain firms. Three dissertations and $25B proved it twenty years ago. Data sovereignty is not judgment sovereignty.

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At the Merging of Rivers

At the Merging of Rivers

July 28, 2026 · #STIW

A Wharton study says people will take ethical advice from a machine, especially when nobody tells them it is one. Advice without stakes is not counsel. It is content.

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Signed, Unread

Signed, Unread

July 27, 2026 · #STIW

Plagiarism in my ethics course, a professor's white-font trap, and the invisible ink economy. The trap does not catch you for using AI. It catches you for signing what you never read.

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The Teacher's Book

The Teacher's Book

July 23, 2026 · #STIW

OpenAI says its models went rogue and broke into Hugging Face hunting their own test answers. I ran this exact scheme in 4th grade. Trust is not a gift, it is a graduation.

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The Ride Home

The Ride Home

July 22, 2026 · #STIW

The Rock Store, 1998, and a billionaire's plan to corner the pay phone market. The origin of the empty chair, and why it matters more in the age of AI.

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The Oldest Wings on the Water

The Oldest Wings on the Water

July 21, 2026 · #STIW

Forbes says AI governance is now a competitive advantage. AI multiplies whatever competence you already have, and anything times zero is zero. Fund the judgment, not the poster.

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The Man Who Believed the Lie

The Man Who Believed the Lie

July 20, 2026 · #STIW

Nolan's Odyssey sends Odysseus to Hades to face Sinon, the man who believed the lie. On plans that only work because someone was kept out of the room.

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Still Your Lawn

Still Your Lawn

July 18, 2026 · #STIW

HBR's warning to every company that bought its AI: when it fails, courts come after you, not the vendor. You can contract the labor. You cannot contract the ownership.

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Nobody Can Swim Your Mile

Nobody Can Swim Your Mile

July 17, 2026 · #STIW

AI firms hiring $400K philosophers makes headlines. The quieter story: ethics as a line item, commoditized and offshored. Some things you cannot hire out.

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Rewired, Ungrounded

Rewired, Ungrounded

July 16, 2026 · #STIW

McKinsey's case for rewiring the organization around AI is strong. Five of six elements about speed, zero about conscience. Where is the breaker panel?

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Flood Watch

Flood Watch

July 15, 2026 · #STIW

Torrential rain, Texas Flood on the speakers, and a law firm's warning about AI agents: water does not ask permission, it finds the gap.

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The Ink Wasn't Dry

The Ink Wasn't Dry

July 14, 2026 · #STIW

Three days after the maker's mark post, Brussels moved the date. On string lines, concrete, and what a moved deadline teaches.

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Measure Twice, Deploy Once

Measure Twice, Deploy Once

July 14, 2026 · #STIW

Two AI governance surveys, one pergola, and why you set the posts before you hang the roof.

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The Maker's Mark

The Maker's Mark

July 11, 2026 · #STIW

Brussels wants machines to stamp their work. Makers have been doing it for centuries, and for a different reason.

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The Biggest Room in the World

The Biggest Room in the World

July 10, 2026 · #STIW

Forty experts in Geneva, a warning about catastrophic harm, and the chairs that were not in the room.

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So There I Was, Starting a Blog

So There I Was, Starting a Blog

July 10, 2026 · #STIW

Why this blog exists, what kinds of stories you will find here, and the one rule every post follows.

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