The Lost Choices Audit
Four questions to run on every AI integration in your stack. One hour, with the people who own it.
Every AI tool you plug in makes decisions before your team ever meets. The model picks the library. The vendor sets the default. The agent chooses the tool. Much of the time that works out fine. The trouble is that nobody writes those choices down, so later nobody can say which ones were yours, or why you abandoned them.
This worksheet is how you find them. Pick one integration — a coding assistant, a model behind a customer-facing feature, an agent with access to your repos — and work through the four questions with the people responsible for it. Write the answers down. The written record is what you're building.
1. Who set the default?
What the tool does when nobody tells it otherwise.
- Which model, vendor and configuration is running right now, and who chose it?
- What does it recommend or generate when a developer doesn't specify — libraries, packages, frameworks, cloud services?
- When did anyone last check whether that default suits this system, rather than the average system?
Red flag: "It came that way."
2. Can you leave?
The cost of changing your mind.
- If this vendor doubled its price or changed its terms tomorrow, how long would it take to switch?
- What data, prompts, fine-tunes or workflows exist only inside their system?
- Has anyone tested the way out, or is it assumed?
Red flag: Nobody can estimate the switching cost.
3. Who speaks first?
When a person and the tool both weigh in, whose answer frames the decision.
- Does the tool's suggestion appear before a person has formed a view of their own?
- In review, are people checking the output or approving it?
- Before anything the model suggests gets installed, does someone confirm the package actually exists, and that it's the one you meant?
Red flag: The first draft is always the machine's.
4. Who still knows how?
The skill underneath the tool.
- If the tool went down for a week, who on the team could do this work without it?
- Are newer engineers learning the underlying skill, or only the prompt?
- What knowledge would leave with the one person who still remembers how this was done by hand?
Red flag: The answer is one name, or no names.
Score it
For each question, mark one:
- Chosen — we decided on purpose, and it's written down.
- Inherited — it came with the tool, and we kept it.
- Unknown — nobody in the room can say.
Every Unknown is a decision someone else already made for you. Start there on Monday.
The Lost Choices Audit is from Jacob Ward, author of The Loop: How AI Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back. He reports on how AI narrows the choices available to people and institutions at The Rip Current.
Score your integration
Pick the answer that describes your team today, not the one you'd like to give. When you're done, copy, email or download your answers. Nothing you type leaves this page unless you send it yourself.
Every answer falls into one of three kinds:
- Chosen: someone decided on purpose, and it's written down.
- Inherited: it came with the tool, and you kept it.
- Unknown: nobody in the room can say.
Say your coding assistant suggests a package. If your team keeps an approved list and someone checks every new dependency before it goes in, that's Chosen. If whatever the assistant suggests gets installed because it usually works, that's Inherited. If nobody can tell you how packages get picked, that's Unknown.
Your score
Answer all four questions to see your result.