Human services demand unprogrammable judgment that no machine or rule can replace.

Evidence

The essence of street-level bureaucracies is that they require people to make decisions about other people. Street-level bureaucrats have discretion because the nature of service provision calls for human judgment that cannot be programmed and for which machines cannot substitute. Street-level bureaucrats have responsibility for making unique and fully appropriate responses to individual clients and their situations. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1168

Categorization

• DEFINE: Provides the working definition of street-level discretion: decisions about people that resist routinization.
• XREF: Resonates with the AI-training classification infra literature — where automated categorization is exactly what this passage says cannot carry human-service judgment.