# Control Systems **Domain:** Engineering / Cybernetics / Regulation **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Evolving **Related:** [[Cybernetics]], [[Feedback Loops]], [[wiki/Surveillance|Surveillance]], [[wiki/Behavioral Modification|Behavioral Modification]], [[wiki/Information Asymmetry|Information Asymmetry]], [[Control Plane]], [[Adaptive Systems]] --- ## Definition **Control systems** regulate processes by comparing observed state with a goal or reference condition and applying corrective action. ## Corpus Context Control becomes governance when the regulated process contains persons or allocates consequential opportunities. [[wiki/Surveillance|Surveillance]] supplies state information, [[wiki/Behavioral Modification|behavioral modification]] supplies actuation and [[wiki/Information Asymmetry|information asymmetry]] determines whether the subject can inspect the feedback or contest the system's representation of error. ## See Also [[Objective Function]], [[Algorithmic Governance]], [[Human Agency]], [[Prediction Is Not Jurisdiction]], [[wiki/Surveillance|Surveillance]], [[wiki/Behavioral Modification|Behavioral Modification]], [[wiki/Information Asymmetry|Information Asymmetry]] ## Russia and Prussia Kybernetiks Context [[Russia and Prussia Kybernetiks]] maps attendance, cohorts, schedules, grades, examinations, inspectorates and teacher preparation onto control-system functions without claiming that eighteenth-century Prussia possessed twentieth-century formal theory. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "In other words, beware not so much of machines that think, but of their self-appointed masters." > **— Dylan Evans**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Fear the Masters of Thinking Machines by Dylan Evans|Fear the Masters of Thinking Machines by Dylan Evans]] > "The most useful thing that we can do at this stage, in my opinion, is to boost the tiny but burgeoning field of research that focuses on the superintelligence control problem (studying questions such as how human values can be transferred to software)." > **— Nick Bostrom**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Superintelligence Control Research Needs Our Best Minds by Nick Bostrom|Superintelligence Control Research Needs Our Best Minds by Nick Bostrom]]