Sign-In
Cart
Invisible Governors: How Automated Systems Took Power - and How We Take It Back
Paperback
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
Publisher: Brian Iselin
Pages: 242
Weight: 0.72
Height: 0.51 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The systems making decisions about your life were never elected. No one asked if you approved. And most of them cannot be stopped.
Between 2016 and 2019, the Australian government sent 526,000 welfare recipients automated debt notices using a calculation method its own lawyers had identified as unlawful - before the programme launched. The legal advice was not shared with ministers. The programme ran for four years after a court found it illegal. People paid debts that did not exist. Two mothers gave evidence to the subsequent Royal Commission about sons who had not survived the process.
In New Orleans, a predictive policing programme operated in secret for six years, generating risk scores on 3,900 named individuals, informing federal prosecutions, and remaining entirely unknown to the city council member who had chaired the criminal justice oversight committee for the entirety of that period. She learned about it from a journalist.
At Facebook, internal documents showed that the company's public claim of removing 94% of hate speech reflected a carefully chosen metric. The actual removal rate, per the company's own researchers: 3 to 5 percent. A whistleblower brought the evidence to the United States Senate. The Senate listened, thanked her, and went home.
Invisible Governors argues that these are not isolated failures of technology, ethics, or political will. They are the predictable consequences of a single structural problem: democratic institutions have deployed automated systems that move faster than their oversight mechanisms, without building the feedback loops that would allow those systems to be seen, contested, corrected, and stopped.
There are five such loops. Each has a name, a documented history in other high-stakes governance domains - central banking, pharmaceutical approval, aviation safety, nuclear deterrence - and a clear institutional architecture. None of them are present in most automated governance systems currently operating.
This book names them. It traces their absence through the most thoroughly documented cases of automated governance failure of the past decade. And it makes the case - without false optimism, but with the weight of historical precedent - that closing them is not a technical challenge but a political one, and that the politics, while difficult, are not unprecedented.
Democracies have built institutional architecture for dangerous new technologies before: after the railways, after thalidomide, after the financial crisis. The governance architecture for automated systems is not a mystery. It has simply, consistently, not been built.
The loops can be closed. The question is who closes them first, and whether they understand what they are building.
Also from
Iselin, Brian
Invisible Governors: How Automated Systems Took Power - and How Democracies Get It Back
Iselin, Brian
Paperback
How Europe Will Decide the China Century: Europe, China, and the Next World Order
Iselin, Brian
Paperback
Also in
General Computers
All Data Are Local: Thinking Critically in a Data-Driven Society
Loukissas, Yanni Alexander
Paperback
Comptia Network+ Certmike: Prepare. Practice. Pass the Test! Get Certified!: Exam N10-008
Chapple, Mike
Zacker, Craig
Paperback
Interactive Theorem Proving and Program Development: Coq'art: The Calculus of Inductive Constructions
Bertot, Yves
Castéran, Pierre
Hardcover
R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data
Grolemund, Garrett
Wickham, Hadley
Paperback
The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think about Artificial Intelligence--Before It's Too Late
Doctorow, Cory
Paperback
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems
Riccomini, Chris
Kleppmann, Martin
Paperback
AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter
Tyrangiel, Josh
Hardcover
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All
Yudkowsky, Eliezer
Soares, Nate
Hardcover
The Year in Tech, 2026: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review
Anthony, Scott D.
Webb, Amy
Review, Harvard Business
Paperback
Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI
Suskind, Dana, MD
Hardcover
Hbr's 10 Must Reads on AI (with Bonus Article How to Win with Machine Learning by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and AVI Goldfarb)
Davenport, Thomas H.
Iansiti, Marco
Review, Harvard Business
Paperback
The Agi Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence
Roose, Kevin
Hardcover
A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future
Wachter, Robert
Hardcover
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want
Hanna, Alex
Bender, Emily M.
Hardcover
Generative Ai: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review
Mollick, Ethan
Cremer, David De
Review, Harvard Business
Paperback
CompTIA Network+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, Ninth Edition (Exam N10-009)
Weissman, Jonathan S.
Paperback
Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience
Cole, Jesse
Paperback
AI Literacy in Any Class: Preparing Students to Thrive in an AI Future in Any Grade Level or Content Area
Miller, Matt
Paperback
Fundamentals of Data Engineering: Plan and Build Robust Data Systems
Reis, Joe
Housley, Matt
Paperback
Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence
Crawford, Kate
Paperback
The Eureka Machine: Why AI Is the Key to Unlocking a New Era of Scientific Discoveries
Socher, Richard
Hardcover
Minecraft: Guide Collection 4-Book Boxed Set (Updated): Survival (Updated), Creative (Updated), Redstone (Updated), Combat
Mojang Ab
The Official Minecraft Team
Hardcover
AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference
Kapoor, Sayash
Narayanan, Arvind
Paperback
Python Crash Course, 3rd Edition: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
Matthes, Eric
Paperback
We Are as Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance
Kotler, Steven
Diamandis, Peter H.
Hardcover
The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip
Witt, Stephen
Hardcover
Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and Pytorch: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques to Build Intelligent Systems
Géron, Aurélien
Paperback
AI with Intention: Principles and Action Steps for Teachers and School Leaders
Frontier, Tony
Paperback
Human + Machine, Updated and Expanded: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI
Wilson, H. James
Daugherty, Paul R.
Hardcover
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (with a New Preface)
Mitchell, Melanie
Paperback
Embedded Systems with ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers in Assembly Language and C: Fourth Edition
Zhu, Yifeng
Paperback
CompTIA Tech+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, Third Edition (Exam FC0-U71)
Wempen, Faithe
Paperback
Hands-On Large Language Models: Language Understanding and Generation
Alammar, Jay
Grootendorst, Maarten
Paperback
The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a New Section: On Robustness and Fragility
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas
Paperback
Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships
Muldoon, James
Hardcover
Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence
Gans, Joshua
Goldfarb, Avi
Agrawal, Ajay
Hardcover
The Empty Center: Permission, Connection, and What We Build When the Future is Uncertain
Drumwright, Hayes
Hardcover
AP Computer Science Principles Premium, 2027: 6 Practice Tests + Comprehensive Review + Online Practice
Reichelson, Seth
Paperback
Fundamentals of Software Architecture: A Modern Engineering Approach
Richards, Mark
Ford, Neal
Paperback
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet with a New Introduction by the Author
Blum, Andrew
Paperback
AP Computer Science a Premium, 13th Edition: Prep Book with 6 Practice Tests + Comprehensive Review + Online Practice (2026)
Teukolsky, Roselyn, M. S.
Carman, Chris
Paperback
AI Projects with Raspberry Pi: High-Performance Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, Security, Home Automation, and Vision
Hattersley, Lucy
Jepson, Brian
Paperback
The Empty Center: Permission, Connection, and What We Build When the Future is Uncertain
Drumwright, Hayes
Paperback
Minecraft: Exploded Builds: Medieval Fortress: An Official Mojang Book
Mojang Ab
The Official Minecraft Team
Paperback
You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place
Shane, Janelle
Paperback
AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference
Narayanan, Arvind
Kapoor, Sayash
Hardcover
The Devops Handbook, 2nd Edition: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, & Security in Technology Organizations
Kim, Gene
Humble, Jez
Debois, Patrick
Paperback
Minecraft: Roll for Adventure: The Temple of the Charged Creeper
Forbeck, Marty
Forbeck, Matt
Hardcover
The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age
Turow, Joseph
Hardcover
You to the Power of Two: Redefining Human Potential in the Age of Identic AI
Bradley, Joseph
Tapscott, Don
Hardcover
Artificial Intelligence All-In-One for Dummies
Minnick, Chris
Mueller, John Paul
Massaron, Luca
Paperback
The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters
Nichols, Tom
Paperback
Graphic Artists Guild Handbook, 17th Edition: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines
The Graphic Artists Guild
Paperback
The AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformation
Brown, Steve
Hill, Paul
Paperback
RHCSA Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10: Training and Exam Preparation Guide (EX200), Fourth Edition
Ghori, Asghar
Paperback
Designing Machine Learning Systems: An Iterative Process for Production-Ready Applications
Huyen, Chip
Paperback
The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America
Vinci, Anthony
Hardcover
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
Suleyman, Mustafa
Hardcover
AI for Educators: Learning Strategies, Teacher Efficiencies, and a Vision for an Artificial Intelligence Future
Miller, Matt
Paperback
More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead
Carter, Jacqueline
Hougaard, Rasmus
Hardcover
Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Artificial Intelligence, Updated and Expanded (Featuring How AI Can Help Managers Think Through Problems by Elisa Farri and Gab
Davenport, Thomas H.
Agrawal, Ajay
Review, Harvard Business
Paperback
Building Applications with AI Agents: Designing and Implementing Multiagent Systems
Albada, Michael
Paperback
Microsoft 365 Excel All-In-One for Dummies
Ringstrom, David H.
Alexander, Michael
Kusleika, Dick
Paperback
Navigeren door het labyrint: Een handleiding voor het beheer van data
Sebastian-Coleman, Laura
Paperback
The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West
Karp, Alexander C.
Zamiska, Nicholas W.
Hardcover
The Experimentation Machine: Finding Product-Market Fit in the Age of AI
Bussgang, Jeffrey J.
Hardcover
What Is Intelligence?: Lessons from AI about Evolution, Computing, and Minds
Aguera Y. Arcas, Blaise
Paperback
Comptia A+ Complete Study Guide, 2-Volume Set: Volume 1 Core 1 Exam 220-1201 and Volume 2 Core 2 Exam 220-1202
Buhagiar, Jon
Docter, Quentin
Paperback
Prediction Machines, Updated and Expanded: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence
Goldfarb, Avi
Agrawal, Ajay
Gans, Joshua
Hardcover
R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data
Grolemund, Garrett
Cetinkaya-Rundel, Mine
Wickham, Hadley
Paperback