Delegated Rationality

What happens when human rationality is no longer limited to what one person can know, calculate, or decide alone?

For decades, Herbert Simon's concept of bounded rationality explained how people make decisions under limits of time, information, and cognitive capacity. In the age of AI agents, those limits are beginning to change. We can now delegate parts of searching, comparing, reasoning, planning, and even acting to artificial intelligence.

This book introduces the concept of Delegated Rationality: a new way to understand decision-making when humans extend their cognitive capacity through AI.

Delegation, however, does not automatically make decisions better. The central challenge is deciding what to delegate, how far to delegate it, and what must remain under human control. Poorly designed delegation can amplify errors, obscure responsibility, or optimize the wrong objective. Well-designed delegation can help individuals and organizations make better decisions while preserving human judgment, values, and accountability.

Drawing on ideas from cognitive science, economics, UX, and real-world digital business experience, Delegated Rationality explores how AI agents may transform consumption, platforms, production, education, and everyday decision-making.

The book proposes practical ways to think about the relationship between humans and AI-not as replacement, but as a carefully designed division of cognitive labor.

As AI becomes capable of acting as well as answering, the important question is no longer simply, "What can AI do?"

It is:

What should we delegate-and what should remain ours?