Mollick: Machines Already Make Management Decisions

Mollick says automated systems already make management decisions, and denying it hides who is responsible.

Ethan Mollick says he hates a slide that keeps coming up, now shared by MIT CSAIL. “This has been false since before the slide was made,” he writes.

Automated systems make management decisions all the time, he says, in trading, logistics, customer service and insurance, and “pretending they don’t actually launders responsibility.”

He calls it especially rich coming from MIT and IBM, which were key to SAGE, “an automated system that automatically assigned interceptors and missiles against incoming aircraft.” In his words: “Literally letting a computer make management decisions.”

Mollick, an MIT alumnus, says this is not an anti-MIT point. CSAIL faculty do a lot of work on automated decision making. He argues the lab should emphasize its work on accountability and alignment, “given that machines are, indeed, making more and more management decisions.”