Essays

Major General (retd.) Juan A. Moliner's account of human control over autonomous weapons, read alongside three civilian cases. In each case the human who was supposed to be able to intervene took years to do so. The essay argues that "on the loop" control is a matter of time and authority, and that responsibility has to follow the decision back to its designers.

Public attention to harmful automated systems usually ends at the moment of recognition, when a court, an inquiry or a regulator finds that the system was wrong. Using the five forms of reparation in the UN Basic Principles on the right to a remedy as a frame, the essay follows six cases past that moment. Cessation is common, compensation partial, rehabilitation rare, and guarantees of non-repetition have repeatedly failed.

The EU AI Act defines its subject by technique and excludes systems built on rules written by people. Several of the most harmful automated decision systems of the past decade fall on that side of the line, and for others the technique was never disclosed. The essay argues that harm follows the decision and its setting, not the method of inference, and that the older, technique-neutral rule on automated decisions in data protection law has proved more useful in court.

The essay sets out the reasoning behind the method used in the first series. It places the work in the line of documentary and forensic art practice, from Hans Haacke's use of public records to Forensic Architecture, and explains four decisions. Every mark is derived from the case record. Harm is never reduced to one number. Uncertainty is drawn rather than hidden. And the people affected are never pictured.