Operational Autonomy

1. Definition

Operational autonomy is the relative autonomy through which a technological system, while dependent upon human purposes and institutional conditions, operates by automation, accumulation, repetition, and feedback in ways that cannot be fully reduced to an individual human being’s present will or direct command.

It is therefore not a concept of consciousness or free will.

2. Why the concept is necessary

If technology is understood entirely as a human tool, it is difficult to explain how algorithms and platforms repeatedly produce and accumulate large-scale effects independently of any person’s present intention. If technology is treated as a fully autonomous subject, however, technological determinism and anthropomorphism follow. Operational autonomy distinguishes a relative mode of operation between these extremes.

3. Four operational elements

• Automation — execution becomes separated from each individual instance of direct human instruction.
• Accumulation — past choices sediment in data, code, and infrastructure.
• Repetition — rules execute repeatedly at scale.
• Feedback — the results of execution constitute subsequent inputs and conditions.

Technology is thus not independent of human beings. Rather, past human decisions become sedimented in technological systems and return to present human beings as if they were external conditions.

4. Agency and responsibility

Agency is not identical with intentionality. Algorithms, platforms, interfaces, and infrastructures can change visibility and available choices and produce actual differences within relational networks without possessing moral intentions. They can be analyzed as nonhuman actors without being anthropomorphized as subjects identical to humans.

Causal agency must nevertheless be distinguished from normative responsibility.

Connected Research

• 2024Generative AI and the Restructuring of Knowledge: The Nature of Creativity and Non-human Subjects현대문학이론연구 95, 189–212 · DOI 10.22273/SMLT.95.8

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