Separation of Duties, for Algorithms Too

One of the oldest rules in grants: the person who requests the money can't be the person who approves it, and neither of them should be the only one recording it. Separation of duties. Boring name, brilliant idea — it means no single person can make a mistake, or misbehave, without someone else seeing it.

Now look at how most teams run AI. The same group picks the tool, configures it, uses it, and judges whether it's working. Requester, approver, and record-keeper, all in one.

That's exactly the concentration of power that separation of duties was invented to prevent.

You don't need a big bureaucracy to fix it. You need a second pair of eyes with real authority: someone outside the build team who reviews what the system is doing, someone who can say "not yet" and be heard. In grants, that was the finance reviewer down the hall. In AI, it's whoever on your team is allowed to ask uncomfortable questions.

Split the duties. It's one of the cheapest controls ever invented, and it works on algorithms too.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.