• Emails fly. Meetings multiply. Everyone starts digging through procedures and policies.

   

  Not to understand and fix the problem, but to make sure their own hands look clean.

• But when problems inevitably arise, the focus shifts from solving to blaming.

   
  • Who missed the step?
  • Who didn’t tick the box?
  • Who’s guilty?
• Sociologists call this loop the vicious circle of bureaucracy: a self-perpetuating cycle where the initial problems of a bureaucratic system lead to the creation of more rules and procedures, which in turn create new problems and require further regulations.
• Risk had to travel up a chain of command so rigid that truth got filtered through layers of approval, PowerPoints, and procedure.

• If you follow the rules, disaster unfolds. If you break them, you’re the one at fault.

    

• Initially everyone always wants more of it. Simply because more responsibility equals more power, promotions, and prestige.

   

  Until something breaks.
• Managers will cite compliance. Frontline workers will blame unclear rules. Executives will cite rogue employees.

• Because every rule, every layer, every sign-off adds a hidden tax on initiative.

   

  Instead of improving products or serving customers, organizations spend all their energy protecting themselves from blame.

• What if responsibility wasn’t something to dodge when things go wrong, but something to share?

   

  Progressive organizations around the world are already showing it’s possible.

• You can only create compliance. And compliance is the enemy of learning.

   

  If we want organizations that adapt and evolve, we need to stop designing for blame and start designing for growth.

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• If you wanted to create a tool that would enable the destruction of institutions that prop up democratic life, you could not do better than artificial intelligence.
• But predictive and generative AI systems are not simply neutral conduits to help executives, bureaucrats, and elected leaders do what they were going to do anyway, only more cost-effectively.
• The very design of these systems is antithetical to and degrades the core functions of essential civic institutions, such as administrative agencies and universities.
• the current design of artificial intelligence systems facilitates the degradation and destruction of our critical civic institutions.
• The more AI is deployed in our existing economic and social systems, the more the institutions will become ossified and delegitimized.
• . In short, AI systems are a death sentence for civic institutions, and we should treat them as such.
• However, as we started to build out this paper, we realized that the threat that AI poses to institutions was far more dire than we had anticipated. We also realized we were far too optimistic about the possible appetite for safeguarding institutions.

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