If AI Helped Make the Decision, Say So

There's a special category of AI use that deserves extra honesty: decisions that change someone's life. Hired or rejected. Approved or denied. Admitted or waitlisted. When AI helped make that call, the person on the receiving end deserves to know.

The emerging standard — in state laws and in plain decency — has three parts. Tell the person AI was involved, in language they'd understand. Explain, at least in general terms, what the AI considered. And give them a path to appeal to a human who can actually reconsider.

This isn't just compliance; it's the kind of transparency that makes organizations trustworthy. People can accept an unfavorable decision. What they can't accept is discovering later that a machine made it in secret.

Write the notice before you need it, the same way you'd write an incident plan. Decide now what you'll say and where it'll appear — in the application portal, the decision letter, the email. Transparency designed under pressure comes out sounding like a cover-up.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.