Black Box Notes

On opacity, auditability, and the limits of trust in modern AI systems.

Department

Cornerstone

The Cornerstone column carries the publication's definitional essays. Each one tries to fix a piece of vocabulary that has been doing too much rhetorical work — 'black box', 'auditability', 'agentic' — and offer a definition the rest of our coverage can rest on. Cornerstone pieces run longer than the rest of the publication.

Recommended

Full archive — Cornerstone

  • What "Black Box AI" Actually Means in 2026

    The phrase has done more rhetorical work in the last three years than almost any other AI term. Most of that work has been imprecise. A working definition, three useful distinctions, and a note on …

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