Attributing Decision Roles in Human–Device Procedures for Allocating Shared Resources

Abstract

A device can determine a resource recipient while people control eligibility, the selection rule, repeated draws, authorization and review. Describing the device's contribution requires several distinct questions about the procedure. This paper develops a role-attribution framework for shared-resource allocation involving people and nonhuman devices. It separates causal pivotality, functional contribution, interpretive attribution, procedural control, institutional authority and responsibility. A staged model identifies where those roles enter. Established Boolean influence supplies a limited causal comparison; worked examples show why its values provide neither exclusive shares of responsibility nor an authority test. Further derivations characterize the effect of changing a random-allocation threshold, accepting the first favorable result across repeated draws, and intervening under limited information and permitted actions. A conditional information-and-action criterion clarifies the difference between a formal override and an effective opportunity. The English school-admissions and appeals codes provide a bounded institutional setting for examining random allocation, supervision and review, without attributing a particular device deployment to those texts. Constructed comparisons preserve the source discussion's questions about stones, ceremonial interpretation and distributed procedures while suspending conclusions about personhood. A prospective audit specifies evidence for each role and conditions for revising an attribution.