On the Crisis of Decision in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Times of crisis usually call for decision, which is what the etymology of crisis in fact reveals. However, in the age of AI and the emergence of the automatic society, a new form of crisis has appeared — namely the crisis of decision itself. With the rise of what are often called “decision machines” human judgment gives way to machinic processing of data. With a historical and theoretical perspective, this paper will look at the conceptual challenges — and political stakes — of decision in the automatic age.