Accountability and recourse: the challenges of building fair systems

In the last century, humanity has achieved remarkable progress through automation and mechanization. We've reduced global poverty, doubled human lifespan, and put the power of the internet into billions of pockets. Yet the journey from physical assembly lines to complex, worldwide information processes has created new challenges alongside its triumphs.

Today's "process meshes"—the intricate systems managing everything from air travel to healthcare to government—have made our world possible. But like the standardization that put a car in every garage, they've also introduced new complexities. FWD50 co-chair Alistair Croll examines how these systems—designed for scale and efficiency—can also marginalize individuals, react slowly to both exploitation and genuine need, and create frustration through their seeming unaccountability.

How do we design systems of recourse that won't be consumed by processes, themselves becoming riddled with loopholes and unaccountability? There's an inherent tension between automation's benefits and the need for human agency, and if we are to rebuild trust in the modern world we need to make our process meshes more responsive and equitable. Only then can we maintain accountability and fairness in an increasingly automated world.