Coming April 2026

The Ethical Nightmare Challenge

How to Avoid the Worst of AI

Suppose I have a cat and you’re kind enough to give me a cat-care guidebook. It works well, I’m happy, my cat is happy.

And then I get a tiger and I come to you and say, “Hey! I got a tiger! I need you to update the cat guidebook to include tigers.”

What would you say?

Would you say, “Sure, no problem, they’re both felines, after all!”?

Or would you look at me, bewildered, fire in your eyes, and exclaim, “Are you nuts?! These are wildly different beasts. You need a new guide altogether!”

Here’s where we are in the world of AI ethics/Responsible AI in the business world. We built AI guidebooks for “narrow” or “traditional” AI, the kind that came out before ChatGPT burst onto the scene. Upon the burst, leaders said, “We need you to update our AI guidebook for generative AI.”

“Sure,” we said. “We’ll make it fit.”

Now leaders say, “We’re doing agentic AI! We need you to update the guidebook again.”

And what we should say in reply is, “Let me tell you a story about a cat and a tiger.”

 

That’s why I wrote The Ethical Nightmare Challenge.

This book presents an entirely novel approach to avoiding the worst of AI. At the core of that approach are three simple questions:

• What are your organizations AI ethical nightmares?
• What resources will you build to avoid them?
• How will you train your people to use those resources effectively?

If your organization can avoid AI’s potential ethical nightmares, it’s ready for AI. If it can’t, you shouldn’t sleep well.

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