Where Do AI Norms Come From? Start by Listening

Summary

Charity Majors opens a planned dialogue with research psychologist Dr. Cat Hicks about norms, ethics, learning, and software teams in the era of AI. She connects Hicks’s research on software-team psychology with themes from her own work on observability engineering: how people and teams improve, what responsibilities they owe one another, and how organizations govern complex sociotechnical systems. AI has added uncertainty to these questions. Teams may deliver more work faster, while managers, executives, or investors raise expectations by multiples that no one can yet assess confidently. Majors says this creates a workplace atmosphere where excitement, insecurity, and existential concern coexist. Her practical answer to companies trying to define AI norms and values is to start by listening. At Honeycomb, she held optional, open-door discussion sessions capped at 10 people and asked broad questions such as what AI-related development had recently annoyed employees. Recurring themes were explored in later sessions, helping the organization understand concerns more fully. She says the meetings also released accumulated frustration, and that the internal rollout of the norms and values documents felt less tense afterward. Hicks’s response was still forthcoming at the time of publication, making this the first part of the dialogue rather than a complete framework.