James A Lang
James A Lang, black and white portrait, arms folded
The book

The right
to be
wrong

Human Judgment in a World of AI

Leaders are handing AI the part of the loop where judgement is actually made. This book shows where that part is, what goes when it's gone, and how to keep it.

James A Lang. Seven chapters. In preparation.
The right to be wrong James A Lang
Chapter one coming soon
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The argument

AI can hold the context. Only you can hold the orientation.

01

Where judgement sits

Not at the moment of decision. Before it, in the making sense of a situation the military calls orientation. The fastest pilot in the sky spent his life on the slowest part of the loop.

02

What we lose

When AI does the orienting, six things go, in order, and most go without anyone noticing. The slow accumulation of that loss is orientation debt. The bill arrives on the worst possible day.

03

How to keep it

A loop for a person and seven conditions for an organisation. It fits on a page, and it is built so that judgement gets practised in the years when nothing requires it.

Seven chapters

Nobody is wrong on a calm day.

  1. 1The right to be wrongA boy of fourteen with all the facts and no picture. Being wrong is human, and the world is compressing the space to be wrong well.
  2. 2Orientation before decisionEveryone has read the OODA loop wrong. A brigadier in Sierra Leone, a prime minister in Libya, a pilot over the Hudson.
  3. 3What we loseA man in a crevasse and a crew over the Atlantic. Six losses, in order, and the debt named.
  4. 4Who is in charge of this model?The two ways an organisation loses the decision, and a company that lost neither.
  5. 5Frictionless governanceWhy the standards are silent on every loss, and why that silence is built in.
  6. 6National resilienceThe same failure at the level of a nation. Sovereignty is the capacity to absorb being wrong.
  7. 7The human loopThe answer. A loop for a person, seven conditions for an organisation, one page.
The launch list

Read the chapters as they are tested. Argue back.

One idea from the book each month, one question at the end, and your replies go back into the manuscript.

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