Interlude

Permission Becomes Scarce

An executed model call is a poor defendant. It may have selected and acted within delegated scope, then terminated before the consequence became contestable. The institution that authorized its use does not vanish with it. Responsibility survives in principals, operators, professional offices, and public authorities capable of explaining the delegation and changing the result.

As cognitive work migrates into computational processes, some human and institutional roles may shift from producing a first judgment to authorizing, contesting, or assuming liability for it. Those offices can become scarce and valuable. They can also become ceremonial: a signature added after meaningful review has already disappeared.

The chapters that follow ask who controls those offices, what risks they actually absorb, and whether answerability remains a power to reconsider rather than a fee charged for lending a name.