Trias Algorithmica: What Code Rules

14 hours ago
4 min read

Updated: 33 minutes ago

More and more voices around the world are acknowledging our algorithmically mediated reality.

Reality is to say that algorithmic systems are algorithmic power.

More and more voices are calling for ways to counter the expansion of algorithmic power: pauses, incentives, institutional guardrails, protected human domains.

In March 2023, the Future of Life Institute and thousands of signatories, including Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, @Yuval Noah Harari, and Steve Wozniak, called for a six-month pause in training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This asks for the power to pause.

Later that year, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson called for AI that complements humans rather than displaces them. This asks for the power of goal-setting.

In July 2026, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal and colleagues organized We Must Act Now, backed by 200+ economists and AI researchers calling for incentives, guardrails and institutions to steer transformative AI toward societal benefit. This asks for the power of institutional response.

More recently, Bill Gates warned that society had no real plan for entering the AI era, calling for “Human Reserved” jobs, revised taxation and government preparation. This asks for the power to set boundaries.

Different moments. Different facets. Same ground: Counter the expansion of algorithmic power, now functioning as governing power, so that society can retain the capacity to govern it.

These approaches are necessary to do so. But insufficient. Because they all take for granted that the algorithmic power they seek to counter is originally legitimate.

That power compounds through three forms of concentration.

A concentration of capability power in the hands of a few. Everyone has seen it. That’s the tip of the iceberg.

A concentration of distribution power at planetary scale, reaching millions, even billions of us. Still in the hands of the same few. Everyone gets it. That’s the submerged but still visible part of the iceberg.

A concentration of governance power that has reconstructed in code what constitutional thought has spent centuries keeping separate. A legislative-like power through objectives, rules and constraints encoded into models. An executive-like power through compute, training and deployment. And a judicial-like power through evaluation, ranking, scoring and moderation. All fused together.

I call this emerging form of governing authority the Sixth Power.

It's a harder part to grasp. That’s the hidden part of the iceberg.

And that is the most consequential. It tells us what the first two concentrations are actually arming.

I recently read that Mark Zuckerberg accused Dario Amodei of chasing power. He's not always right. But on that, he is. They all do.

Meanwhile, we have all been looking at the surface.

We have focused heavily on the first two concentrations of algorithmic power: the concentration of capability and the concentration of distribution.

This is where calls for pauses, incentives, institutional guardrails and protected human domains apply almost exclusively: at the effectuation level.

We have ignored the third concentration of algorithmic power: the concentration of governance. This is the source of the governing algorithmic power. The causation level.

And this is where governability, whether algorithmic or not, inevitably requires legitimacy.

Not all governing powers are made legitimate. Neither are all counterpowers.

Algorithmic power is no exception. Nor are the counterpowers we build to govern it.

What makes this governing concentration of algorithmic power legitimate?

One of our most durable social technologies for making power governable has been Montesquieu’s Trias Politica: the separation of powers.

Constitutional thought spent centuries separating these three functions, legislative, executive and judicial.

Separation of powers sustains counterpower; and counterpower sustains legitimacy.

It does not feel like a coup. Because it arrives as a service.

One of our most durable social technologies for making power governable has been Montesquieu's Trias Politica: the separation of powers.

Separation of powers sustains counterpower; and counterpower sustains legitimacy.

Trias Algorithmica asks what a separation of algorithmic powers might look like and whether the principles that made political power governable can also help us make algorithmic power governable.

The question of algorithmic power legitimacy is only beginning...

Trias Algorithmica: What Code Rules is now available for pre-order.

If you haven’t already, please pre-order Trias Algorithmica today, wherever you buy your books, to help make it a success in ensuring that the debate over the legitimacy of algorithmic power gains the attention and influence it deserves; because it concerns us all.

You can use this Bookshop link to support independent bookstores, click here for the official Trias Algorithmica book page or go to one link below for other pre-order options.

Thank you very much for being part of this journey!

Hamilton

Warm

UNITED STATES