Definition
The ground rule that a model of a person is not the person: no representation, however accurate, acquires automatic authority to extinguish the represented person's standing against it. A system may infer, classify, predict, and recommend, but the person remains the party who carries the consequences and whose challenge the system must answer.
It matters because the framework's treatment of corrective standing rests on it. Standing is inalienable, not generous: if the subject of a decision could be replaced by a sufficiently detailed model of themselves, a challenge would be a quality-control step a good enough model could close. Accuracy is evidence for a decision; it is never the decision, and it never substitutes for the person.
Tests that show it is in place
- A system acting on an inference about a person can name what that person's challenge would do to the action.
- Model accuracy is never cited as a reason a person's challenge is unnecessary.
- The subject of a decision is identified separately from the user of the system.
Evidence to keep
- Artifact: A decision record that names the person it acts on and the route by which that person can challenge it.
- Behavior: A challenge by the represented person that reaches the inference that justified the action.
- Metric: Share of consequential decisions where the represented person's challenge route is recorded.
References
- The model of a person is not the person · Theory
- Laws · Doctrine