AI governance vs ethics

A CONSTITUTION IS NOT GOVERNANCE

January 26, 2026 by Basil C. Puglisi Leave a Comment

Anthropic’s constitution for Claude is a serious Ethical AI document, but it is not AI Governance. This white paper by Basil C. Puglisi separates Ethical AI, Responsible AI, and AI Governance and shows where the constitution stops short of human oversight. It closes with a Minimum Viable Governance Annex template that organizations can adopt.

New AI Certificates for Doctors and Teachers Teach Checking. Do They Certify It? #AIg

Google launched an AI certificate for healthcare professionals that takes under five hours and carries up to 5.0 CME credits, and Scale and UMSL launched a 12-hour microcredential for teachers. Both teach evaluation of AI output. A European teacher framework asks for evidence of it, and employers can too.

OpenAI Built Four Layers to Watch Its Agents. Human Paging Mostly Keeps Business Hours #AIg

OpenAI’s October 29 post describes up to four automated layers that watch its agents, then discloses that human paging runs at any hour only for highest-priority alerts on frontier training runs, during business hours for most other traffic, and is currently off for internal Codex. For enterprise deployments, alerts go to the customer’s own webhook, and on our reading so does the decision.

House Democrats Ask AI Labs for Incident Reports Within 48 Hours of Discovery #AIg

Letters dated October 27 ask five frontier AI companies for a full accounting of misalignment incidents by November 11 and notice within 48 hours of discovery. None of the fourteen requested items asks who inside a company decides a flagged event is an incident, and that decision is what starts the clock.

A New Jersey Bill Takes Reasonable Care Off the Table for Chatbot Injuries #AIg

New Jersey’s A5607, reported out of committee on October 19, would make a chatbot a product and hold its provider liable for any injury to a user from its use, even after all reasonable care. The monthly harm assessment it requires still needs a named person to decide what the numbers mean.

Europe Proposes Free Access to the Standards Behind AI Act Compliance #AIg

The European Commission proposed on October 6 to make standards referenced in EU law free to read, speed up how they are requested and assessed, and write its own common specifications when standards bodies run late. With EN 18286 now the first AI Act standard, the question is what a faster standard can certify.

New York City Wants a One-Step Exit From Every Customer Service Chatbot #AIg

New York City’s consumer agency proposed rules on October 20 for AI chatbots and phone menus: disclose the bot up front, offer a one-step path to a human, and keep logs showing whether customers got help. The 72-hour repeat-contact count may matter most.

Barclays and Amex Cut 5% Each for AI. Neither Said Who Will Check the Work #AIg

Barclays plans about 5,000 job cuts with fewer developers as AI lifts productivity, and American Express is cutting about 5% of positions to prepare for AI. Wider spans of control and fewer reviewers meet more AI output. Four questions to answer before an AI-justified cut.