Authority transfers faster than accountability.
Human-Machine Authority Layer
Across the lifecycle of any incident, interpretive and executive authority migrates between six actors, analyst, AI system, command, autonomous executor, political leadership, public. Where authority lives at each phase shapes who can be answerable later.
Detection: Signal observed. Interpretive frame still open.
Width of each band shows proportional interpretive / executive authority held by that actor during this phase.
“Authority migrates. Accountability does not.”
The autonomous executor holds 60% of operational authority during the Execution phase, and zero percent in the Accountability phase. Authority that cannot be answerable is structural impunity, not delegation.
DESIGN QUESTION
The central design question facing machine-speed institutions is not whether AI systems should hold authority; they already do, but at which phases authority should transfer back to actors who can be examined retrospectively.
RECURRING PATTERN
In observed cases, authority concentrates where deliberation is unstructured (Classification, Framing) and disperses where execution is automated (Execution, Authorisation). The dispersion is what makes outcomes feel unowned.