Bureaucracy as training: how modernity prepared for the exam that will execute AI
Abstract (informal)
Artificial intelligence does not introduce a qualitatively fresh problem in the management of societies. Rather, it reveals and radicalizes the dynamics that have been practiced for more than 2 centuries as part of modern bureaucracy. This text puts the thesis that bureaucracy was a historical training of social systems in separating decisions from meaning, and AI is the final exam from this separation. The stake is not efficiency, but the ability of societies to proceed to keep legitimacy in a planet where decisions can be made without understanding.
1. Problem wrong: “AI vs. man”
The debate on artificial intelligence almost always starts with false opposition: algorithms versus human values, automation versus autonomy, device versus responsibility. specified a frame suggests that AI is an external threat that abruptly appeared in a unchangeable planet of institutions, laws and sense. But the real question is, why was the planet ready for AI?
The answer is uncomfortable. He was ready due to the fact that for a long time he learned to operate under conditions where decisions are procedurally correct, but increasingly little embedded in meaning. This planet was a modern bureaucracy.
2. Bureaucracy: the first decision-making strategy without understanding
Classical bureaucracy was not created as a tool of oppression, but as a solution to a real political problem: how to govern large complex societies without arbitrary power of individuals. Its answer was formalization — rules, procedures, standardisation, separation of roles from individuals.
In this sense, bureaucracy was a immense moral achievement. The decisions were to be:
predictable,
equal to the law,
formally justified.
At the same time, however, bureaucracy has introduced something radically new: a systematic separation of decisions from experience of meaning. The authoritative did not request to realize the intent of the whole, it was adequate that he did the procedure correctly. work was transferred from individual to trial.
It was the first step towards a planet where no 1 is guilty, but everyone is subject to decisions.
3. Pathologies of bureaucracy as structural symptoms
All classical accusations against bureaucracy — callousness, formalism, alienation, decision-making paralysis — are not its distortions, but its logical consequences. Bureaucracy is perfectly able to cope with repeatability and stability, but systematically loses its capacity to:
recognition of exceptions,
maintaining pluralism of values,
adjustments to its own performance criteria,
narrational justification of the decision over time.
In the L-field language, bureaucracy stabilises decisions at the expense of the evolution of meaning. It is simply a strategy that works more and more efficiently, at the same time little knowing why it works in specified a way alternatively than in another way.
4. AI as perfection of bureaucratic ideal
Artificial intelligence does not destruct bureaucracy. She does it. What was earlier slow, costly and susceptible to human opposition becomes quick, inexpensive and consistent. AI is simply a bureaucracy without officials — a decision-making strategy that:
no doubt,
I don't request a narrative,
does not bear the existential cost of the error.
Therefore, the biggest threat to AI is not its "inhumanity", but besides good compliance with our organization habits. AI works precisely as we have taught systems to operate for a long time: it optimizes according to defined criteria without asking for the meaning of these criteria.
5. The Exam Now Begins
If bureaucracy was training, then AI is an exam with 1 basic question:
Can society inactive keep legitimacy erstwhile their effectiveness ceases to require human participation?
This exam does not work:
the calculation power,
data quality,
compliance with the procedure.
The ability to:
system stop,
contesting the criteria,
defending sense where it is ineffective.
6. Field L as the only alternative
Neither the return to arbitrary power nor the escalation of procedural control can be the answer. Both roads lead to a failure of meaning — 1 through violence, the another through indifference. The only real alternate is to recognise that not all decisions can and must be optimised, and to institutionally keep field L: the space where decisions stay open to criticism, conflict and reinterpretation.
AI governance does not so trust on "control" algorithms, but on protecting places where algorithms should not have the last word.
7. Conclusion: the consequence of the exam is not fixed in advance
Bureaucracy has taught us to live in a meaningless world, as long as this planet works smoothly enough. AI makes certain it's enough. If we answer yes, the test will be passed — but at the expense of what makes human decisions. If we say no, we have a period of tension, conflict and inefficiency.
History does not warrant that we will choose well.
It only gives you the chance to admit that this is the moment.
