Every important decision has a room and a set of people who are not in it. The Missing Chair is a discipline for asking whose interests, knowledge, or consequences are absent from the current conversation.
Before finalizing a decision, name the missing chairs: the frontline employee, the student, the donor, the customer, the regulator, the community member, the person who must implement the plan, the person who will bear the unintended consequence. Ask AI to help generate the questions those stakeholders might raise.
Then distinguish simulation from evidence. If the missing stakeholder materially matters, talk to the stakeholder. AI can improve the questions you bring to that conversation. It cannot confer legitimacy on a decision made without the people whose lives it affects.
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