Axis II · D5
Algorithmic governance
Thesis. Algorithmic governance is the set of mechanisms through which an organization exercises effective control over its AI systems. Human oversight, to be real, must be structural, not cosmetic. The operational criterion is not the existence of a committee, but its capacity to modify the system, or suspend it, under time pressure.
The distinction that cuts
Cosmetic vs structural human oversight. Cosmetic oversight signs minutes; structural oversight can interrupt the production chain without seeking authorization. The test is temporal: how many hours between the decision to stop and effective stop.
Typical market error
Importing the academic ethics committee model, which is consultative, periodic and has no stop authority, into an industrial setting where algorithmic decisions carry legal effects. This produces governance theatre, costly and documented, that does not survive an hour of MDR litigation.
Failure signals
The governance committee has no stop authority opposable to operations. Human overrides are not traced, therefore unauditable, therefore legally non-existent. No separation between the function that develops the model and the function that validates its release. No periodic measurement of override rate or its evolution. An override rate falling to zero signals either excellence or supervision collapse, and without measurement the two are indistinguishable.
References
EU AI Act art. 14 (human oversight) and art. 17 (quality management system); ISO/IEC 42001:2023; NIST AI RMF 1.0, Govern function; OECD AI Principles (2019, revised 2024); for medical, MDCG 2025-6 on SaMD and MDR art. 10 on general manufacturer obligations.
Ground of implementation
PREDICARE deploys GHT governance with explicit stop authority entrusted to a mixed clinician/data committee. Override architecture is traced, motivated, aggregated for quarterly analysis. The instance illustrates the possibility of structural oversight in a multi-establishment setting; it does not prove this scheme transposes outside a GHT, where the chain of authority is more diffuse.
Articulation
Direct continuum with D4, of which it is the operationalization, and with D9. Governance without organizational absorption capacity remains a superposed layer, therefore inoperative.