2026-07-12 23:57 UTCOriginal source1 min readUpdated: 2026-07-13 01:01 UTC

Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI)

The concept of Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI) originated at Apple and is defined as the person ultimately accountable for a project's success or failure. The author argues that LLM-powered agents should never be considered DRIs because only humans can take accountability. This echoes IBM's 1979 training slide stating that a computer cannot be held accountable and therefore must never make a management decision.

SourceSimon Willison's Weblog

Simon Willison’s Weblog

12th July 2026 - Link Blog

Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI). I went looking for a definition of "Directly Responsible Individuals" and the best I found was in the GitLab handbook. Apparently the term originated at Apple, where it's used to describe the person who is "ultimately accountable for the success or failure of a specific project, initiative, or activity".

I've been thinking about this term recently in the context of LLM-powered agents and how they fit into human organizations. I don't think an agent should ever be considered the DRI for a project - that's something that feels uniquely human to me, because humans can take accountability for their actions where machines cannot.

(See also IBM's legendary 1979 training slide that states "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.")