Computer Power and Human Reason

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   Autonomy is granted in steps, with approval thresholds on whatever is irreversible; the AI Act requires effective human oversight for high-risk systems.

   Computer Power and Human Reason · 1976

   Autonomy is granted by reversibility: suggest, ask for approval, act and report.

   The levels of autonomy: suggest; act with approval; act and report; act alone. They are assigned by reversibility and blast radius, not by the model's confidence. The approval interface shows the action or the diff, not the reasoning essay; it batches approvals; it times out on the safe side. The regulatory state in September 2026: the prohibited practices (Article 5 of the AI Act) have applied since 2 February 2025; the transparency duties (Article 50) since 2 August 2026; for the high-risk systems of Annex III, the "digital omnibus" package deferred the obligations to 2 December 2027, and the human oversight of Article 14 applies to those. Even outside high risk: a log a human can read and an owner for every agent. Weizenbaum's question is not whether it can be done, but whether it ought to be.

   “Since we do not now have any ways of making computers wise, we ought not now to give computers tasks that demand wisdom.”

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