Nobody Is Holding Predictive Systems Accountable
Predictive systems are already making binding decisions in finance, healthcare, and decentralized organizations. The striking fact is that there is no one to hold accountable.
We tend to believe that every important decision has an author. A manager signs a form, a doctor confirms a diagnosis, a regulator issues a mandate. Authority has historically been tied to presence, to a figure who can be addressed, challenged, or appealed to. Yet predictive infrastructures are dismantling that assumption. Today, more and more outcomes are being generated without anyone giving the order. The decisions are real, their consequences profound, but the “who” behind them has dissolved.
Case 1: Banking and Automated Freezes
Imagine your account being frozen overnight. No phone call, no suspicious human clerk, no conversation. The trigger was a compliance engine. High-frequency trading data fed into an algorithm, an anomaly detected, and a sanction threshold surpassed. Within seconds the system produced an enforcement action. The banker did not choose, the regulator did not review, and yet the freeze was binding. The sovereign in this situation was not a person but a line of compiled instructions.
Case 2: Hospitals and Predictive Scoring
In medicine, the same pattern appears. Patients are classified by automated triage systems that calculate probabilities of illness. A score of 0.69 may mean low risk, while 0.70 crosses the threshold to high risk. If you are below that cutoff, you may find your treatment delayed or denied. Doctors receive these scores as recommendations, but in practice they operate like orders. The decision is executed before deliberation. It is not a doctor’s judgment that excludes the patient; it is the architecture of the predictive system.
Case 3: DAOs and Unstoppable Code
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations push this even further. Smart contracts are deployed on-chain and cannot be reversed once active. MakerDAO and Compound execute liquidations and adjust collateral ratios without human intervention. When a contract fires, treasury movements occur automatically. There is no board meeting, no executive veto, no pause button. The authority is procedural, and once triggered, it cannot be appealed.
The Common Thread
Although these examples come from very different domains such as finance, healthcare, and blockchain, they all share a structure. The source of authority has become opaque. Decisions are experienced as if they came from an agent, but there is no one behind them. This opacity is not accidental, it is designed into the system. Once a rule is compiled and encoded, it acts independently of deliberation.
Another common element is procedural binding. In each case, what counts is not meaning, explanation, or context but the fact that the rule has been triggered. An anomalous transaction is frozen regardless of intention. A patient below threshold is deprioritized regardless of symptoms. A DAO contract liquidates assets regardless of community debate. The procedure itself becomes binding, more powerful than interpretation.
Finally, there is the collapse of appeal. Under older frameworks, there was always someone to challenge: a manager, a doctor, a regulator. Here, no such figure exists. The banker cannot override the freeze, the doctor cannot bypass the score, the DAO has no board to escalate to. Authority is distributed into code, and once activated, it cannot be reversed.
Why It Matters
This matters because it changes how power is exercised in everyday life. Authority used to be visible and embodied, now it is hidden and procedural. When decisions are made without presence, accountability disappears. You cannot appeal to a line of code or question an algorithm in court the way you would a human authority.
The consequences are serious. Financial stability may seem more secure, but at the cost of customers trapped by automatic freezes. Healthcare systems may process more patients, but individuals are reduced to risk scores that can misclassify or exclude. DAOs may be efficient, but they remove all recourse when rules produce unintended harm.
In each case, people are compelled to obey outcomes that no one explicitly issued. This creates a vacuum of responsibility. Everyone is affected, but no one is in charge. The result is a structural form of governance where efficiency is maximized, yet fairness, accountability, and human oversight are minimized.
The Broader Shift
What we see in these domains is not isolated. It signals a broader transformation in how societies govern themselves. Authority is migrating from voice to infrastructure, from deliberation to automation, from presence to absence.
Historically, political theory assumed that power needed a subject such as a king, a parliament, or a regulator. Predictive systems show that power can operate without one. Authority is no longer tied to the visible figure but to the hidden architecture. What compels obedience is not a sovereign decree but a probability score, a compliance threshold, or a self-executing contract.
This shift alters the meaning of legitimacy itself. Legitimacy no longer rests on the consent of the governed but on the silent authority of systems that preempt possible actions. The rules act first, and rationales if they exist come later. Citizens and institutions alike adjust to an environment where compliance precedes understanding.
In short, the broader shift is toward a society where governance is automated, accountability is diffused, and authority is spectral. It has not disappeared. On the contrary, it has become stronger by dissolving into infrastructures that no one sees but everyone must obey.
Call to Action
To explore this phenomenon in detail, read the full paper Spectral Sovereignty: Authority Without Presence in Predictive Systems available at Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17063518 and follow the author’s SSRN profile for ongoing research: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=7639915
Author Details
Agustin V. Startari \n ResearcherID: K-5792-2016 \n ORCID:https://orcid.org/0009-0001-4714-6539 \n Zenodo Archive:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17063518
Ethos
I do not use artificial intelligence to write what I don’t know. I use it to challenge what I do. I write to reclaim the voice in an age of automated neutrality. My work is not outsourced. It is authored. \n — Agustin V. Startari
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