The Machine as Office-Holder: Can Artificial Intelligence Exercise Delegated Authority?

Friday 21 August 2026 The most important question about artificial intelligence is no longer whether a machine can think. That formulation — inherited from Alan Turing, science fiction and several centuries of philosophical speculation — may eventually prove profound. For the present, however, it has become a distraction. Machines are already being allowed to act, whether or not they think in any…