Ultimately, this is the meaning of corporate capture in this context. It is a description of who possesses the capabilities that decide outcomes in markets, elections, conflicts, and daily life. The power to shape the next decade is, to a degree without historical precedent, held by entities that were not elected, that cannot be voted out, that are not bound by any treaties, and that are answerable, in the last analysis, to shareholders whose interests are not the interests of the human species.

Our argument here that the civil rights framework cannot bear the full weight of AI accountability — that organizing AI governance primarily around protected class discrimination leaves an enormous portion of the harm unaddressed, and leaves the people harmed by it without adequate legal recourse.

Workday disclosed “1.1 billion applications were rejected” through its platform during the relevant period; the collective “could potentially include 'hundreds of millions'” of people who sent applications in good faith, who prepared their resumes and wrote their cover letters and submitted their materials through the proper channels with hope, only to be processed and discarded. Processed and discarded. Processed and discarded. Repeatedly. By an algorithm applying criteria that no one was required to disclose, producing rejections that no one was required to explain, at a speed and scale that made the entire exercise invisible to the people it affected most.