THE ARCHITECTURE OF AI CONTROL - Governing the Point of Consequence

AI is increasingly changing where consequential judgment is formed. A model can now exercise preliminary judgment before a decision-maker sees either the output or the causal chain that produced it. It can shape the frame through which the problem is understood, select the sources considered and structure the basis on which facts, assumptions and alternatives are assessed. The decision-maker then exercises a further layer of judgment over an intellectual structure that may already have been materially formed by AI. Error can therefore arise within either layer, pass from one into the next, or be reinforced through subsequent judgment without becoming sufficiently visible. Formal approval may identify the human decision-maker, but it neither reconstructs the successive formation of judgment nor establishes where an error of fact or judgment first entered it. The control object must consequently extend beyond the system, the output and the act of review to the formation of judgment across AI and decision-maker layers, and to the detection of error within that structure.