Directive decision devices: Reversing the locus of authority in human-computer associations

With respect to human-computer relationships, the long-prevailing presumption is that the latter will perforce be bound in service to the former. Recently, however, both the public and business administration arenas have seen the first appearances of what these pages see as an essentially novel class of computer constructs, Directive Decision Devices. Unlike decision aids, Decision Support Systems or the conciliatory computer constructs encountered in conventional man-machine compacts, directive decision devices are designed not to assist people, but to supersede them. Towards this end, directive decision devices are fitted out to function as de facto decision-makers, and so can be assigned administrative or managerial responsibilities that would otherwise have remained with people. Directive decision devices can then come in two forms: (i). Those designed to outright displace human functionaries, and so configured to operate as entirely autonomous entities, and (ii). Those intended to be deployed in company with humans, but with the latter positioned as the subservient parties. Along either of these two lines, it will be argued here, the emergence of directive decision devices presages a perhaps seismic shift in the balance of practical power from people to computer apparatus.