Grady Booch corrects Ethan Mollick: SAGE interceptor assignment was deliberately human
Grady_Booch · x · 2026-10-19
Software engineering luminary Grady Booch pushed back on Ethan Mollick, stating it is "false" that SAGE was fully automated: in the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment air defense system, threat assessment and intercept computations were computerized, but interceptor assignment was intentionally kept as a human decision. He cited a book on the SAGE Wide Area Network as evidence — a notable historical data point in debates over human-in-the-loop AI systems.
Related event: Grady Booch Corrects Mollick: SAGE Kept Humans in the Loop(2 posts)→
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