BlueSky Bookshelf meets Hamilton Mann: Trias Algorithmica

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty,” warned Montesquieu in 1748. Nearly three centuries later, Hamilton Mann argues that we have reassembled exactly that concentration of power, and that this time we have written it into code.

Mann is Executive Chairman and President of the Artificial Integrity Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing AI systems that put integrity ahead of intelligence. That was the argument of his bestselling Artificial Integrity, which we featured on the BlueSky Bookshelf last year. It was named one of the Top 10 Essential AI Books for 2025 by the Next Big Idea Club, and sits on Egon Zehnder’s 2026 CEO Insights reading list. Thinkers50 named him to its Radar of rising business thinkers in 2024 and gave him its Distinguished Achievement Award for Digital Thinking in 2025.

His new book, Trias Algorithmica: What Code Rules, moves from the integrity of AI systems to the legitimacy of algorithmic power. Simon Johnson, the 2024 Nobel laureate in economics, calls it “a fascinating assessment for the age of AI”, and the Next Big Idea Club has named it a Must-Read of 2026.

We spoke to Mann, who lectures at INSEAD and HEC Paris, about why a lawful system can still be illegitimate, what independent approval for AI would look like before it reaches the public, and the one question that reveals whether a company’s AI governance is real: who can stop whom?

Check out the full article on Bluesky