Book of the Month: Bears & Mosquitoes 

Overview

For August, the Book of the Month is Bears & Mosquitoes: Building Trusted AI from the Inside Out by Dale Martin. Over the last year we’ve reviewed a lot of content related to AI, an area many organizations are still struggling with, so it behooves us to review a field guide to governance, especially agentic AI governance. 

Out of the gate, the reader is hit with a delightfully analogous title, Bears & Mosquitoes. This serves as a metaphor for governance throughout the book – starting with what Bears represent, then moving to what Mosquitoes represent, then providing a framework for a solution. The author is quick to note that the book provides a framework, not an implementation guide. The agentic AI space is changing so rapidly and Martin recognizes that a chiselled-in-the-stone published book is not going to stand the test of time, potentially even months.  However, the framework presented in the book will. Furthermore, the book sets up a community for its readers, with a couple of websites for resources and discussion presented later.   This makes the book excellent for those who are data and AI governance folks, as well as people just learning the space. The overarching metaphor of the book makes it very approachable. 

The book starts off with Bears. The bear metaphor describes our traditional data governance programs. Martin describes the bears as a lumbering risk we all are aware of.  We hypothetically approach our campsite (the organization) and we see the signs, risks, fences, guardrails, and activities we should do to protect ourselves (secure our data, put our food in a bear-safe locker) and so on. Ultimately, this section of the book reads like a love letter to data governance and gives the reader an appreciation of everything data governance has solved over the last 30+ years. 

We then segue over to Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are used to describe agentic AI. Martin is quick to point out that the beginning trappings of AI governance are very much like our Bear governance: We have standard guardrails, signage, accountable folks, and so on. However, when we add in orchestration and automation, the scope of the problem can multiply, and we can easily lose control of the environment. That’s when we suddenly have thousands of agents buzzing around our organization, and how do we know what they are actually doing and what abilities they truly have? They have become the Mosquitoes that have snuck into the tent. No amount of signage, fences, or anything would keep them out or manage them. 

With that setup, Martin goes into a framework for governing our mosquitoes. Of particular note, Martin presents what he calls “The 15 Virtues of Living Agents.” This particular chapter really arms the reader with the types of behaviors and personas that can help define how agents work in our organization, whether they work with each other through orchestration, or with our human employees at our company. 

To conclude, there’s a lot in this book that will arm a reader to help them frame a solution for solving the significant challenge of managing agentic AI, many things this review didn’t touch on. The true magic of this book is how well the analogy of Bears & Mosquitoes fits, and how well it communicates the challenges, goals, and deliverables of both data governance and AI governance. This makes it an excellent book for a governance-curious individual and expert alike. Further to all this, the dedication to create a community space and discussion makes this a must-have title.    

More About the Author 

Dale Martin spent three decades leading technology operations and governance for global enterprises, most recently at Thermo Fisher Scientific, where he led AI strategy and responsible AI governance for an organization of more than 100,000 employees. Standing at the front end of the code, he learned what it takes to trust the systems people work beside – and, at 66, a self-described non-coder, he taught himself to build with them. Bears & Mosquitoes is the field guide that came out of it, written for anyone – not just technologists – navigating what comes next: the new cyber employee, cyber leader, cyber human. His mission is an optimistic one: AI for good, used as a lever that hands back analog time and value for the people and work that matter most. He advises leaders through MortarCloud and lives in Carlsbad, Calif., with his family.