Life Conversations: Automation Paradox

Have you heard about Wiener's Law: "Automation will routinely tidy up ordinary messes, but occasionally create an extraordinary mess." He said this about automation and fly-by-wire technology on airplanes.

It raises a few questions for all of us folks who are driving an increased amount of automation in businesses. Are we overdoing automation? What are the risks of automation? Is there an 'Automation Paradox' we are not thinking about?

Three stages of automation create an interesting paradox: 

First, automatic systems accommodate incompetence by being easy to operate and by automatically correcting mistakes. Because of this, an inexpert operator can function for a long time before his lack of skill becomes apparent—his incompetence is a hidden weakness that can persist almost indefinitely without being detected. 

Second, even if operators are expert, automatic systems erode their skills by removing the need for them to practice. 

Third, automatic systems tend to fail either in unusual situations or in ways that produce unusual situations, requiring a particularly skillful human response. 

For each of these three strands, a more capable and reliable automatic system makes the situation worse as there are no human experts left to intervene immediately. 

Gary Klein, a psychologist who specializes in the study of expert and intuitive decision-making, summarizes the problem: "When the algorithms are making the decisions, people often stop working on getting be Want to add a caption to this image? Click the Settings icon. tter. The algorithms can make it hard to diagnose reasons for failures. As people become more dependent on algorithms, their judgment may erode, making them depend even more on the algorithms. That process sets up a vicious cycle. People get passive and less vigilant when algorithms make the decisions."

There may be a solution to Automation Paradox. Combine the adaptability, judgment, and tacit knowledge of humans with the reliability of computers, reducing the reliance on computers. Reverse the role of computers and humans. Rather than let the computer drive with the human poised to take over when the computer cannot cope, perhaps it would be better to have the human drive with the computer monitoring the situation, ready to intervene. Computers, after all, are tireless, patient, and do not need practice. Why, then, do we ask the people to monitor the machines and not the other way around? 

#automation #AI #humansandmachine

(From the book - Messy)