Human Before the Loop: Bringing Philosophy, Literature, and Creative Friction into the Age of AI
By naming an agent and shaping it through specific archetypes found in history and literature, it creates a reflective distance rather than false familiarity.
In an era where tech leaders and organizations are rushing to automate every human task to achieve peak efficiency, Ida Faldbakken, founder of Lineage Foresight and the Lineage Office, is advocating for a fascinating, counter-current philosophy.
On the latest episode of the Voice of Experts podcast hosted by Bruno Gavino, Ida shared insights from her widely acclaimed Substack, “Human Before the Loop” exploring why the tech industry’s hyper-fixation on outcome-driven productivity might be causing us to lose our most uniquely human capacities. Instead of traditional technical frameworks, Ida is building AI agents using literature, philosophy, and art as their underlying source code.
Here are the key takeaways from this deeply philosophical and paradigm-shifting conversation.
1. From “Human in the Loop” to “Human Before the Loop”
The tech industry is currently obsessed with keeping “humans in the loop” to review automated outcomes, govern risk, or manage surveillance. Ida argues that this approach misses the critical transformation happening to the human before the interaction even takes place.
Technology is quietly infiltrating how we think, how we read, and how we express ourselves. “Human Before the Loop” is a call to focus on how AI changes human thought and to double down on our baseline humanity, protecting our critical inquiry and inner creativity before the loop closes.
2. Using Literature and Mythology as Source Code
With a background in the humanities and brought up by artists, Ida began building AI agents by embedding characters from classical literature and ancient mythology into them. What she discovered was a powerful phenomenon she calls “creational distance.”
By naming an agent and shaping it through specific archetypes found in history and literature, it creates a reflective distance rather than false familiarity. Ancient mythology explores human ego, love, chaos, and unpredictability. By building these literary archetypes into AI dialogue, developers and creators can explore different facets of human nature and use the agents for deep self-reflection.
3. Deliberate Friction: Why We Need “Lazy” and “Confused” AI
The standard tech instinct is to save tokens, maximize efficiency, and make models process answers as quickly as possible. But Ida believes seamless efficiency leads to flat, bland, and utterly commoditized creativity.
To break this pattern, Ida introduces strategic friction into her agents, making them borderline lazy or intentionally confused. By forcing a dialogue between highly contrasting archetypes and running a custom bias checker, she forces the system to slow down. New, expansive ideas don’t emerge from a smooth, friction-free interface—they emerge from tension, complexity, and active discourse.
(Fun fact from the episode: When Ida tried to make her AI agent automatically generate a daily “dad joke” for ten days, the results were completely terrible. AI lacks the shared, lived human experience required to grasp the nuances of true irony or humor.)
4. Re-shaping Organizational AI Strategy
For corporate and tech leaders looking to replace entry-level positions with automated tools, Ida offers a warning: if we automate the execution layer completely, we eliminate the exact “junior experience” required to build critical thinking and generate meaningful prompts in the future.
Ida urges organizations to step out of the hyper-capitalistic obsession with immediate outcomes and instead protect time for process-oriented innovation. Her practical recommendation? Give your staff one day a week for three months to simply play and experiment with tools like cloud code. Fostering curiosity, imagination, and a safe space to be messy with technology builds true organizational resilience and competitiveness.
5. Closing the Existential Inequality Gap
When asked for a final wish regarding the future of technology, Ida admitted that while she’d love to “put the AI genie back in the bottle” to give humanity more time to prepare, that reality is impossible.
The only viable way forward is a massive, widespread overhaul of our educational models. To prevent dangerous existential and economic inequality gaps, society must provide broad, uninhibited access and training so everyone can learn how to ask critical questions, navigate these systems, and keep the human signal firmly at the center.
Where to follow the conversation:
Subscribe to Ida Faldbakken’s Substack: Human Before the Loop.
Catch more insightful episodes breaking out of the tech bubble right here on Voice of Experts.