History · Power · Accountability
From Kings to Code
The question is centuries old: how do we restrain power when those who hold it fail to care for the people affected by their decisions?
A new kind of king
Chapter 2 of Algorithmic Duty of Care draws a parallel between historical rulers and contemporary “digital kings”: technology executives, powerful institutions, algorithms, and data systems capable of influencing lives at extraordinary scale.
Where a monarch's authority was tied to territory, algorithmic systems can operate across borders. They influence access to work, loans, services, information, and justice—often in ways that are difficult for an affected person to inspect or challenge.
When power moves from kings to code, the question of accountability does not disappear.
Why the Magna Carta matters here
The Magna Carta of 1215 is a touchstone in the book's discussion of legal restraint and the principle that even the most powerful must answer to law. It was not a modern universal bill of rights, nor was it itself a technical specification. Its significance here is the enduring demand that power be accountable.
Mason and Hall use that historical parallel to ask whether duty of care should also govern the algorithms and data systems through which today's institutions exercise power.
Not only the machine
The book does not absolve executives, agencies, or designers by blaming software. The systems are built, adopted, supervised, and defended by people. An Algorithmic Duty of Care therefore needs both technical safeguards and accountable human institutions.
It is a practical question as well as a philosophical one: what happens when the people in authority ignore repeated warnings, and how might a system be designed to make that failure harder to sustain?
From historical principles to digital responsibility
The book's argument joins rule-of-law traditions with a preventive approach to system design. Rather than waiting for a scandal and subsequent litigation, it asks designers and institutions to consider human vulnerability at the beginning.