realistically emergent systems aren't designed or thought about
I'm aware of how they work. I'm arguing that someone who builds a system is responsible for it even if they don't know how it works. Ignorance, even in the face of a system so complex that no person could ever understand the underlying causes of what it does, is not an excuse. No one should be able to hide behind complexity.
Developers must either build in protections against their systems going wrong or they shouldn't deploy them.
I want to agree with your thesis, but it's impossible to foresee every possible outcome. Leaky abstractions aside, bugs aside, misaligned incentives (the new "I was just following orders", as someone here immortally put it) aside, it is impossible to imagine a priori all the ways a certain outcome that is desirable now will be undesirable in the future.
Every step of the development ladder is fraught with possibilities for error and catastrophe. To quote James Goldman:
"It is too simple. Life, if it's like anything at all, is like an avalanche. To blame the little ball of snow that starts it all, to say it is the cause, is just as true as it is meaningless."
It's useful to distinguish between responsibility and accountability here. The algorithms may be responsible for a particular outcome but the people who commissioned them should be accountable.
What about turnover? If the buck stops at the CEO, what happens when that person moves on? Is their successor responsible for everything that went on prior? Im not saying either way, just asking how that should work.
Is their successor responsible for everything that went on prior?
Yes.
That wouldn't even be a change to the current system. That's how it works now. If you take on the role of CEO and it turns out that years earlier the company did something terrible you will be expected to resign. It's one of the reasons they demand so much money.
Pretty much always if the incoming CEO can competitively negotiate and is a good hire.
Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of career CEOs are good hardworking people. Like any high profile position, the outliers skew perception for everyone.
Lets take, for example, a red light camera software that is trained to recognize plate numbers and issue traffic tickets. The decision to design and deploy the software was made by a human. The decision to send you a ticket was not. Nothing to do with complexity or being wrong, there is simply no human anywhere who made that specific decision.
I'm aware of how they work. I'm arguing that someone who builds a system is responsible for it even if they don't know how it works. Ignorance, even in the face of a system so complex that no person could ever understand the underlying causes of what it does, is not an excuse. No one should be able to hide behind complexity.
Developers must either build in protections against their systems going wrong or they shouldn't deploy them.