Writing by Chris McClean
Articles
On AI, human judgment, accountability, and the discipline required to use powerful tools well.
These articles are written the way I think. Stream of consciousness first. Then AI to develop and expand the observations into language a reader can follow. I read, confirm or correct, and refine. That cycle repeats until it is ready. Sometimes I return to edit after publishing. The ideas are mine. The tool comes after.
The Human in the Loop
A phrase has been circulating in AI governance conversations long enough that it has started to feel like a policy. The human in the loop. Someone reviewed it, therefore it is accountable.
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The First Gate
The question of who gets access to resources, opportunity, and abundance is usually asked outward. I think those questions represent the second gate.
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Cheating or Adaptation
A private school caught students using AI to prepare for an oral exam. The school called it cheating. The question is whether the test was ever measuring what it claimed to measure.
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Seen or Confirmed
A connection that confirms you and a connection that sees you can look identical for years. The difference only becomes visible under pressure.
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Where Are You Before the Question
An actor described one of the best lessons he ever learned. He learned it in the street before he was acting.
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The Pause Creates Strength
A bodybuilder noticed something most lifters had been ignoring. The real stimulus happened somewhere else entirely. The gap between stimulus and response works the same way.
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Served
The platform serves content to the individual. The platform also serves the individual to advertisers. The word serves is doing the same work in both directions.
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Before You Answer
There is a moment between the question and the answer. Most people skip it.
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The Ceiling You Built
Every moment feels like trying to avoid what should be done. The failure is not in recognising a goal not being met. The failure is forgetting that the goal was never set at the action.
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The Window
Every major technological shift reorganizes the hierarchy without dissolving it. We are in the window between the old hierarchy being visible and the new one being legible.
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The Identity Tax, Part Two
The first Identity Tax named the cost of being outside the dominant group. This article names the tax paid by people inside the dominant group who are not at the center of it.
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The Meaning of the Word
When a word covers everything, it protects nothing. On the gap between what we mean when we speak and what arrives on the other side.
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Farmed Out
Bumble announced your AI agent will soon date on your behalf. The search was not the inefficiency. It was the first part of the finding.
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The Easy Fix
This morning I wanted a croissant. The wellness industry has colonized the language of healing. The body is always error detecting. The question is whether the intervention reads the flag or medicates it.
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The Weaver and the Thread
While writing a series of articles about AI, economics, and the human condition, I was looking for the weaver. Then something landed: maybe when I am looking for the weaver, I forget that I am also weaving.
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The Body Knows
A friend who spent her career in pharmaceuticals is watching AI with that specific kind of attention. She sees pain, job loss, and the industry getting ready. She said: people had better work on their coping skills. I heard two things in that sentence.
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The Hub and the Wheel
Agent-to-agent commerce removes race, gender, and location from the transaction. It does not remove capital. The anonymity democratizes the transaction. It does not democratize the access to transact.
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Who Gets the Abundance?
Technology is deflationary. A debt-based economy cannot allow deflation. AI is the most powerful deflationary force in a generation. The question is not whether the abundance arrives. The question is who is in the room when the terms are set.
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Before You Use the Tool
Malta required AI literacy before handing citizens a tool. The educators I spoke with this week are largely outside the room where that literacy is being designed. Most of them are not.
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The High-State Problem
The people most at risk from AI are not the ones who are afraid of it. They are the ones who are very good at using it and know it.
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The Identity Tax
Every tool purchased without a corresponding change in behavior creates a small debt. AI is giving the I an extraordinarily sophisticated new set of tools to maintain the gap with.
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