Lexicon
To draw the line, first find the words.
author
noun, verb
From Latin auctor, one who makes something grow, related to augere, to increase.
The person who decides what a text, product, or decision is for, and answers for it. In the age of intelligence, authorship moves from writing to signing.
“The model drafted it; she authored it.”
cognitive yield
noun
A working term used in this publication.
The economic work actually produced per unit of machine intelligence deployed. A measure of the realized effect of AI, as opposed to its installed capacity.
“We measured cognitive yield by the work completed and checked, not by the tokens consumed.”
delegation line
noun
A working term used in this publication.
The boundary between the tasks you hand to machines and the judgments you keep. Drawn in advance, reviewed quarterly, and shared with the people who work with you.
“Every leader has a delegation line. Most have never drawn it.”
kairos
/ˈkaɪ.rɒs/ noun
Greek: the opportune moment.
The window in which a decision is still cheap. For leaders, a reminder that the moment to choose a limit often arrives before the pressure that makes the limit necessary.
“The quiet month before the launch was their kairos for writing the rules.”
personal AI constitution
noun
A constitution applied to one person’s use of artificial intelligence.
A written set of rules for one person’s use of AI: what they delegate, what they never delegate, how they verify, how they protect attention and data, and how they disclose.
“Her constitution gave the team a boundary they could predict.”
realization gap
noun
A working term used in this publication.
The distance between the intelligence an organization has installed and the value it has realized. An AI plan should measure both.
“The licenses were active; the realization gap was still wide.”
replacement resistance
noun
A working term used in this publication.
The degree to which a capability resists substitution by machines. In this publication, a prompt to identify the judgment and relationships that remain a person’s responsibility.
“The task was easy to automate. The trust around it had replacement resistance.”
sovereign data
noun
A working term for control over the information entrusted to you.
Information whose terms of use, access, and value remain under the control of the person or institution it describes. The governing question is not only where data lives, but who may decide what happens to it.
“Before uploading the archive, they wrote down the terms on which it could be used.”
stop the line
verb phrase
Used here as an operating rule for automated work.
To pause a process when an output, source, or instruction does not meet the agreed standard. In AI operations, any reviewer must be able to halt a pipeline and bring a person back into the decision.
“The source did not support the claim, so the reviewer stopped the line.”
the remainder
noun
A working term used in this publication.
What is left of a job when everything a machine can do has been done. Judgment, meaning, and responsibility live there. Design for it deliberately rather than discovering it by accident.
“Her new role was designed around the remainder: choosing, explaining, and answering for the decision.”
A conversation
worth having.
For speaking invitations, collaborations, and questions about the work.