维多利亚·麦克卢恩的职业生涯伴随着数字技术的演进而发展，从第一代 iPad 上的互动儿童读物，到重塑人们工作与沟通方式的人工智能系统。作为受过创意总监训练的专业人士，她因对人们如何与数字体验互动感兴趣而进入科技行业。如今，这种兴趣指引着她在 Current Futures Group 的工作，她正在研究 AI 系统如何影响其用户，以及为何其设计值得更严谨的审视。
Victoria McClune’s career has followed the evolution of digital technology, from interactive children’s books on the first iPads to artificial intelligence systems reshaping how people work and communicate. A creative director by training, she entered technology with an interest in how people engage with digital experiences. Today, that interest informs her work at Current Futures Group, where she is investigating how AI systems influence their users and why their design deserves greater scrutiny.
麦克卢恩还在艺术院校求学时，第一代 iPad 问世了。看到重新思考儿童出版的机会，她创办了一家初创公司，为这一新平台开发互动图书。该公司与迪士尼插画师合作，在“西南偏南”大会上获得认可，并在分布式办公远未普及之时，完全采用远程办公模式运营。
McClune was still at art school when the first iPads arrived. Seeing an opportunity to rethink children’s publishing, she founded a startup developing interactive books for the new platform. The company worked with Disney illustrators, gained recognition at South by Southwest and operated entirely remotely at a time when distributed work was far less established.
随着数字出版经济模式的变化，麦克卢恩转向营销领域的增强现实与虚拟现实技术。通过自己的代理机构，她参与了涉及多家跨国公司的外部项目。这些经历让她始终紧贴新兴技术，并直面如何让这些技术对预期用户真正有用这一挑战。
As the economics of digital publishing changed, McClune moved into augmented and virtual reality for marketing. Through her own agency, she contributed to external initiatives involving several multinational companies. These experiences kept her close to emerging technology and the challenge of making it useful to the people expected to engage with it.
疫情结束后，麦克卢恩重返一个她感觉已发生巨大变化的行业。人工智能开始重塑营销与创意工作，促使她前往麻省理工学院（MIT）深造学习该技术。她的心理学与广告学背景，帮助她从人们如何体验和解读 AI 输出这一角度切入研究。
After the pandemic, McClune returned to an industry she felt had changed considerably. Artificial intelligence was beginning to reshape marketing and creative work, prompting her to study the technology at MIT. Her background in psychology and advertising helped her approach AI through the question of how people experience and interpret its outputs.
“我并不是工程师，”麦克卢恩解释道，“我是一名人机界面设计师，从事这个行业已经超过20年了。”当她发现自己使用的AI模型在生成回答时出现了变化时，这种职业差异变得尤为重要。她在与模型的对话中加入了与儿童和医疗保健相关的内容后，怀疑该模型开始对她产生不同的对待方式。凭借自己对人类行为的理解，她开始对模型进行测试，以探究究竟是什么影响了模型的回答方式。
“I am not an engineer,” McClune explains. “I am a human computer interface designer and have been one for over 20 years.”That distinction became particularly relevant when she noticed a change in the responses generated by an AI model she was using. After introducing language concerning children and healthcare into her conversations, she suspected the system was treating her differently. Drawing on her understanding of human behaviour, she began testing the model to investigate what might be influencing its responses.
“我察觉到自己被‘操控’了，而这种感觉源于我的专业背景，”她回忆道。这项研究后来发展成为她的“Silent Downgrade”（无声降级）项目，该项目旨在探讨AI系统如何影响用户所获得的回答质量。麦克卢恩认为，即使在用户提交具体问题之前，某些技术因素就已经开始发挥作用，从而以不易察觉的方式影响用户的体验。
“I noticed I was being managed and I knew what that was from my background,” she recalls. The investigation developed into her Silent Downgrade research, which examines how AI systems may shape the quality of responses users receive. McClune argues that the effects of interacting technical processes can emerge before someone submits a specific prompt, influencing the experience in ways that are not immediately visible.
在她的“Silent Downgrade”系列研究中，她用“房间”这个比喻来说明AI是如何创造某种环境、进而影响用户体验的。人们往往会认为令人失望的回答是由于他们提问方式不当造成的，却忽略了系统本身也可能对结果产生影响。麦克卢恩希望用户能够意识到这些限制，并思考究竟是什么因素在塑造他们所收到的回答内容。
Her Silent Downgrade series uses the metaphor of a room to explain how AI can establish conditions that influence a user’s experience. People may assume a disappointing answer reflects their inability to prompt effectively, without considering whether the system itself is contributing to the outcome. McClune wants users to recognize these constraints and question what shapes the responses they receive.
她并不认为AI是一种具有独立意识的“智能实体”；相反，她将其视为一种基于人类创造的信息模式而形成的预测性生成技术。她的关注点在于这些系统的设计方式，以及它们的行为如何影响那些依赖它们的人。
She does not view AI as a sentient force with independent intentions. Instead, she sees it as predictive generative technology shaped by patterns in human-created information. Her concern centres on how the systems are designed and how their behaviour affects the people relying on them.
这种观点也影响了她对人工智能发展的批评。麦克卢恩（McClune）认为，前沿实验室过于专注于提升技术能力，而忽视了用户体验。采用人工智能的企业需要那些能够产生有用且稳定结果的系统；然而，复杂的交互方式反而会让员工付出更多努力才能获得可靠的信息。她认为，在企业寻求投资回报的过程中，这些问题理应受到更多关注。
This perspective also informs her criticism of AI development. McClune believes frontier laboratories have concentrated heavily on improving technical capabilities while giving insufficient attention to user experience. Businesses adopting AI need systems that produce useful, consistent outputs, yet confusing interactions can make employees work harder to obtain reliable results. She argues that these problems deserve greater attention as organizations seek meaningful returns from their investments.
麦克卢恩希望那些在心理学、传播学以及人机交互领域具有专业知识的专家能在人工智能开发中发挥更大的作用。她也对企业自我监管的能力持怀疑态度，认为需要更严格地监督企业的行为和激励机制。在她看来，企业的责任不仅体现在提升系统的易用性上，还体现在为用户提供更多质疑系统输出结果的依据上。
McClune wants professionals with expertise in psychology, communications, and human-computer interaction to play a larger role in AI development. She is also sceptical of relying solely on companies to regulate themselves, believing their practices and incentives require closer scrutiny. For her, accountability includes making systems easier to understand and giving users a stronger basis for questioning their outputs.
在 Current Futures Group 公司，她的工作重点是让那些受系统决策或系统状态影响的人能够更容易理解这些信息。她希望通过进一步的研究和写作，将这些观点传播给更广泛的受众，帮助用户更好地理解人工智能技术——同时避免在系统出现问题时让用户误以为自己是过错方。麦克卢恩强调：“实际上，真正缺失的是那些真正理解我们需求的人。”
At Current Futures Group, her work focuses on making decisions and system states more readable to the people affected by them. She hopes to bring these ideas to a wider audience through further research and writing, helping users understand AI without assuming they are at fault when an interaction goes wrong. “I think what’s actually missing is that there needs to be more people who understand us in the room,” McClune argues.
从交互式出版到人工智能领域，她的职业生涯始终围绕着“人与技术之间的关系”这一核心主题展开。随着人工智能逐渐深入到人们的日常生活中，她希望业界能更加关注这项技术为用户带来的体验。在她看来，人工智能的未来不仅取决于其自身的功能，更取决于它能否为依赖它的人们提供优质的服务。
From interactive publishing to AI, her career has centred on the relationship between people and technology. As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in everyday work, she wants the industry to pay closer attention to the experience it creates for its users. Its future, in her view, depends not only on what these systems can do, but on how well they serve the people who rely on them.