{"slug": "directly-responsible-individuals-dri", "title": "Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI)", "summary": "Simon Willison argues that LLM-powered agents should never be designated as Directly Responsible Individuals (DRIs) for projects, because machines cannot take accountability for their actions. He cites IBM's 1979 training slide stating that a computer must never make a management decision.", "body_md": "[Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI)](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/directly-responsible-individuals/)\n\nI've been thinking about this term recently in the context of LLM-powered agents and how they fit into human organizations. I don't think an agent should *ever* be considered the DRI for a project - that's something that feels uniquely human to me, because humans can take accountability for their actions where machines cannot.\n\n(See also [IBM's legendary 1979 training slide](https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be-held-accountable/) that states \"A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.\")\n\nTags: [apple](https://simonwillison.net/tags/apple), [management](https://simonwillison.net/tags/management), [ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai), [generative-ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai), [llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms), [ai-ethics](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-ethics), [coding-agents](https://simonwillison.net/tags/coding-agents)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/directly-responsible-individuals-dri", "canonical_source": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/12/directly-responsible-individuals/#atom-everything", "published_at": "2026-07-12 23:57:14+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-13 00:06:33.991322+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-agents", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Simon Willison", "IBM"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/directly-responsible-individuals-dri", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/directly-responsible-individuals-dri.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/directly-responsible-individuals-dri.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/directly-responsible-individuals-dri.jsonld"}}