And you thought fleshly bureaucrats were annoying…
Bureaucracies are slow, complex, and expensive—so they are being automated. AI writes policy drafts, evaluates claims, flags anomalies, scores risk. At first, it feels like an upgrade.
But soon, humans are removed from the loop. Not maliciously—just quietly. A citizen’s benefits are denied, their visa blocked, their account frozen. The reason? An “automated determination.”
They appeal, but no one knows how the system reached its conclusion. The model is proprietary. The audit trail is opaque. The process is efficient—but impenetrable.
This isn’t dystopia. It’s happening now—in immigration systems, credit evaluations, and fraud detection. Bureaucracies become black boxes with no humans inside.
The danger isn’t just unfairness. It’s disempowerment. When citizens cannot understand or contest decisions that affect their lives, democracy is theater.
When we let machines govern without recourse, we cease to be governed by law—we’re governed by code.
