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. The ideas are mine. The tool comes after. I am not trying to promote AI. I am trying to think clearly about what it is doing to us — economically, socially, and personally — while there is still a window to observe it honestly. Human connection and cooperation are not casualties of this transition. They are the point. The tool is in service of that or it is not worth using.
The Foundation
The ready-made answers made the harder question unnecessary. On identity, the scaffolding that replaced it, and the ground that does not require the ladder.
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Upstream
The Latin word is possidere. To sit upon. To occupy. To hold. On ownership, income, the Cantillon flow, and what you hold when you hold nothing.
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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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