The Irreversibility Threshold: Command Authority Under Automated Decision Pressure

Link to Paper
Most systems are built to optimize.
Very few are built to stop.

The moment an automated decision produces consequences that cannot be recalled, reassigned, or meaningfully repaired, optimization ceases to be the governing logic. Authority does.

At that threshold, speed, accuracy, and confidence scores become secondary. What matters is whether refusal is structurally enforced - not as an ethical afterthought, but as an operational constraint.

This is not about whether a system can recommend well.

It’s about whether it is prevented from acting when accountability can no longer be carried by a human chain of command.
Organizations that fail to recognize this threshold won’t fail loudly.

They’ll function - right up until the first outcome they cannot unwind, own, or explain.