The AI Taxonomy.
Terms  /  System Transparency  /  Decision Fog
06 · System Transparency

Decision Fog

The user can see the output but not the reasoning, trade-offs, or alternatives the model considered.

Decision Fog is a specific form of System Opacity focused on the decision-making process. The model made a choice — it picked React over Vue, chose a SQL join strategy, selected a particular algorithm — but the user has no visibility into why. What were the alternatives? What trade-offs were weighed? What constraints influenced the decision? In Decision Fog, the user receives a conclusion without the argument. This is particularly dangerous for technical decisions where the "right" answer depends on context the model may have misunderstood.

Example
An agent designs a database schema and chooses to denormalize a frequently queried table. The user sees the schema but not the reasoning: the agent weighed query performance (faster reads with denormalization) against data consistency (harder to maintain with denormalization) and chose performance. But the user's unspoken priority was consistency — they're building a financial application. The decision was reasonable but wrong for this context, and Decision Fog prevented the user from catching it before implementation.

More in System Transparency

System Opacity

The inability to see what an AI system knows, why it made a decision, or what it did. The default state of most AI tools today.

Black Box Agency

An agent that acts on your behalf but won't show its work. You get results with no audit trail.

Invisible State

The system has internal state that affects behavior but is not exposed to the user.

Accountability Gap

No one — human or system — can explain why a specific output was produced.

Reasoning Visibility

The user can inspect the model's chain of thought, assumptions, and decision points.

Decision Traceability

Every output can be traced back through the reasoning, context, and data that produced it.

Open State

The system's internal state is visible and inspectable at any time. The opposite of Invisible State.

Audit Trail

A complete, immutable record of what the system did, when, why, and with what inputs.