CONCEPT
The Box-Ticker
Workers who produce documentation, reports, and metrics demonstrating that processes have been followed — regardless of whether the processes accomplish anything.
Box-tickers generate evidence of process. The compliance officer producing reports no one reads. The quality assurance specialist documenting that procedures were followed. The administrator preparing materials demonstrating that the institution has met its accreditation requirements. Graeber identified box-ticking as the form of bullshit most resistant to elimination because it serves a political function distinct from any productive one — the demonstration that institutional responsibility is being exercised. AI's relationship to box-ticking is paradoxical. The technology can automate compliance documentation with extraordinary efficiency. It also generates entirely new categories of compliance requirement — AI ethics reviews, algorithmic impact assessments, AI bias audits — each requiring its own apparatus of human box-tickers. The result is what Mills and Spencer call efficient inefficiency: bullshit at scale.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Box-ticking proliferates across every sector of advanced economies. In universities, faculty spend increasing time documenting that teaching is conducted according to approved methodologies — time that would otherwise improve teaching. In hospitals, clinicians document that care meets approved protocols — time that would