Definition
Ethotechnics is the engineering discipline of keeping an automated decision system answerable as it grows. Six things have to stay tied together: what the system can do (capability), what it is permitted to do (authority), the evidence that justified the permission (evidence), how hard it would be to do without it (dependency), who can challenge its decisions and be answered (standing), and who can halt and reverse it (correction). When they come apart, a system that gains ability becomes power nobody can review. Where ethics asks “What should we do?” Ethotechnics specifies the mechanisms meant to make it happen and the records that show whether they did.
Its unit of governance is the consequential decision and the delegated agency that produced it, and its working question is whether that delegation is still a justified delegation today. The method states the chain, the six safeguards, and the twelve laws that the standards bind.
Tests that show it is in place
- Documentation maps each obligation to a mechanism (stoppability, standing, repair ownership).
- Teams can show a shipped feature whose halt, reversal, and appeal paths were designed, measured, and revised.
Hypothetical example
- A hospital release board requires consent checks, halt controls, and named repair owners before deploying triage updates.
References
- Governance taxonomy · Resource
- Healthcare diagnostics comparison · Guide