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MechanismVideo · 17:53 — 19:23

Technologists and executives interpret the same underlying reality of data (like cross-referencing databases) completely differently: engineers see manipulable bits that can be freely recombined, while executives see rigid structures with rules that shouldn't be crossed—so techies blame 'bugs' while executives blame the AI firms.

Pasha argues that the tech/CEO divide in reacting to AI risk comes from a deeper worldview gap: engineers see data as freely recombinable bits, executives see it as bounded structures, so the same capability (e.g., cross-referencing records) looks routine to one side and alarming to the other. ✦ AI generated

Pasha · The Cognitive Revolution · 2026-06-26 · original ↗

starts at this moment · 17:53

on the tech side, you kind of see all of these things as like little bits of information and that the bits of information are man manipulatable and like it doesn't take much to transform one bit to another bit... on the CEO side, you kind of look at all of this as like structures and these structures have rules and regulations.

verbatim transcript · starts at 17:53

Transcript · around this moment

17:53all so stupid. Oh, goodness. I I I have a little bit of empathy having been both on like kind of like this more CEO side and been more on the Cto side. And I think the difference is that on the tech side, you kind of see all of these things as like little bits of information and that the bits of information are man manipulatable and like it doesn't take much to transform

18:20one bit to another bit and um you know uh and you kind of have this view that you can structure all the bits together and you can you know make something out of it. Um on the CEO side, you kind of look at all of this as like structures and these structures have rules and regulations and etc etc. And the bits cannot leak from one, you know, area to

18:39another because it's not in the structure, right? Like the structure is like this. It doesn't like work like that, right? And you have this view that um it's almost like someone else built it and you don't have agency in like the building of it. So it's not you don't have this sense that you can move information from here to here and all of a sudden you get something new right. So

19:01this is the kind of thing for example that you know um if if for [clears throat] example you know you wanted to spot every single illegal immigrant in the United States you could just look at the tax records and then you could just like cross reference and you could look at you know who's paying taxes but doesn't have a social security like a proper social security number or

19:20social security number is like you know has been used multiple times etc etc. You can do a lot of stuff with cross referencing databases. And on the on like the more executive side, this is seen as a big no no as a privacy thing as like you know all of this like you know it should be illegal or etc etc. But on the tech side, it's like, oh, you of course you cross

19:42reference databases, right? Like, of course, this is this is a given, right? Because how else do you run a big organization except like accumulating all their data and then cross referencing it? And then you can do like really innovative things like, you know, filling in people's taxes for them and, you know, filling in all their forms and they don't have to repeat all this stuff. And in terms of usability, that's

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