On AI, Leadership, and Lessons from Eastern Europe
It always starts harmlessly.
A sense of coincidence. A word spoken out loud — only to appear a few hours later in your digital feed. An ad. A suggestion. A “random” occurrence that happens too often to remain random.
We laugh it off.
“The phone is listening to us,” we say, half joking.
But beneath the joke lies something deeper. Not fear of the microphone itself — but an intuition that power is shifting faster than our understanding of the systems shaping it.
And that is where the real question begins.
Listening Is Not the Real Problem
Public debate often gets stuck on a technical detail:
Is the phone listening — yes or no?
That is the wrong question.
The truth is more unsettling:
The systems don’t need to hear you to know what you are talking about.
AI does not primarily work with words — it works with patterns.
Your tempo. Your pauses. Your movements. Who you meet. What people around you search for. How long you linger in front of a shop window. How you type, delete, hesitate.
The result is not surveillance in the old sense — it is prediction.
And once prediction becomes accurate enough, a new form of power emerges:
the power to act before you have consciously decided.
From Marketing to Governance
At first, this feels commercially harmless.
You talk about money — banks appear.
You mention changing cars — car companies follow you.
You consider a trip — airlines are ready.
We accept this, sometimes annoyed but rarely alarmed. It’s the price of “free” services, we’re told.
But let’s extend the line.
What happens when systems no longer just suggest — but initiate action?
When they don’t just display — but contact?
When they don’t just react — but judge?
At that point, we are no longer in the world of advertising.
We have entered the realm of leadership and power.
When Probability Replaces Responsibility
The truly dangerous moment arrives when AI is used for moral or legal assessment.
Not what you have done.
But what you are statistically likely to do.
This is the step that changes everything.
Historically, the rule of law has been based on action:
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An act occurs
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It is investigated
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A human evaluates
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Responsibility is assigned
AI introduces something fundamentally new: predictive authority.
When systems begin to say:
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“This person is a risk”
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“This behavior deviates”
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“The probability is too high to wait”
…power shifts from human judgment to algorithmic logic.
And then we must ask:
Who leads the systems that now lead us?
Eastern Europe Knows What This Means
For those raised in Western Europe, this may sound abstract. Theoretical. Almost philosophical.
In Eastern Europe, it is not.
It is memory.
During the communist era, entire societies were built around preventive control. The state did not need proof of action — it needed indicators of thought.
Organizations like Stasi and KGB did not primarily investigate crimes. They monitored deviation. Wrong associations. Wrong silences. Wrong thoughts.
These systems were slow, analog, deeply human in their flaws.
But they shared something with today’s AI systems:
faith in statistics over the individual.
The difference today is speed — and scale.
AI Has No Memory of Consequences
Human leadership carries hesitation. Experience. Moral friction.
An algorithm does not.
AI does not remember interrogation rooms.
It does not remember fear.
It does not remember how “preventive measures” destroy lives.
That is precisely why AI leadership is not a technical challenge — it is an ethical one.
To lead AI is not to optimize decisions.
It is to draw clear lines around what must never be automated.
Leadership in the AI Era: Slowing Down, Not Speeding Up
The biggest misconception today is that AI leadership is about “keeping up”.
The opposite is true.
Real leadership means:
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saying no to certain applications
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accepting inefficiency where human judgment is essential
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understanding that not everything that can be done should be done
In Eastern Europe, the failure was not technology — it was the absence of restraint. Every system was “rational”. Every decision “logical”. Every measure “for the common good”.
The language is hauntingly familiar today — only the vocabulary has changed.
Responsibility Cannot Be Delegated to Code
There is a sentence that should stand above every AI system used in public life:
“The algorithm provides input — the human carries responsibility.”
As long as this principle holds, there is hope.
The moment responsibility shifts to:
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“the system”
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“the model”
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“the data”
…democracy erodes in practice.
You cannot appeal a probability.
You cannot reason with a model.
You cannot explain your life to a neural network.
The Silent Parallel
What makes this especially dangerous is how quietly it happens.
No walls are built.
No soldiers march.
No ideology is proclaimed.
It arrives wrapped in convenience.
Justified by efficiency.
Driven by innovation.
And that is exactly why it echoes so strongly with how control once emerged behind the Iron Curtain.
Closing Thoughts: Experience Is Not Resistance
Those who lived it know.
Those who remember understand.
Warning about this is not technophobia.
It is experience-based leadership.
AI needs leaders who have seen systems abused.
Who understand that power always seeks shortcuts.
Who know that the future will not be decided by technology alone — but by who keeps a hand on the brake.
Because when the machine one day knows what you are thinking,
it is leadership’s responsibility to ensure it does not also decide what happens next.
By Chris...
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