Society cannot replace frontline human decision-making in public services with machines.
Evidence
But how much can human intervention beeliminated from teaching, nursing, policing, and judging? The fact is that we must have people making decisions and treating other citizens in the public services. We are not prepared as a society to abandon decisions about people and discretionary intervention to machines and programmed formats. Yet how can one advocate greater attention to the intervening and discretionary roles of street-level bureaucrats in the face of the enormous and often well-deserved popular discontent with the effectiveness and quality of their work? — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 54
Categorization
- QUESTION: Frames a tension central to the book: discretionary intervention is indispensable yet widely resented. Worth chasing how far automation has since shifted this calculus (e.g., algorithmic welfare adjudication).
- XREF: connects to: Human services demand unprogrammable judgment that no machine or rule can replace. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1168; Replacing skilled labor with AI can result in harm, not benefit. — Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, The AI Con- How to Fight Big Tech’s…, 168; Formal fairness rules cannot dictate concern levels, so workers apply personal deservingness judgments — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 212
Broader Connections
- Human services demand unprogrammable judgment that no machine or rule can replace.
#corroborates(0.95) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1168 - Formal fairness rules cannot dictate concern levels, so workers apply personal deservingness judgments
#exemplifies(0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 212 - Replacing skilled labor with AI can result in harm, not benefit.
#corroborates(0.75) — Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, The AI Con- How to Fight Big Tech’s…, 168