🦉 10x curiosity — Issue #51 — The Irony of Automation
Thinking…
Several weeks ago we looked at the line of thinking that most of human progress has occurred through automation of tasks. There is a down side to automation that is often not considered, at least initially, that relates to the loss of skills from workers. As far back as 1983 this was identified by Lisanne Bainbridge introducing the Irony of Automation.
This is a wonderful article on safety. Bainbridge initially discusses the two ironies of automation
The designer’s view of the human operator may be that the operator is unreliable and inefficient… so should be eliminated from the system. There are two ironies of this attitude. One is that designer errors can be a major source of operating problems… The second irony is that the designer who tries to eliminate the operator still leaves the operator to do the tasks which the designer cannot think how to automate…it means that the operator can be left with an arbitrary collection of tasks, and little thought may have been given to providing support for them.
Through years of hands on experience operators learn their craft and how to “drive” whatever machine they are in charge of. Through the daily feedback of seeing how actions change the process they learn both basics and more complicated scenarios. This disappears with automation.
Physical skills deteriorate when they are not used, particularly the refinements of gain and timing. This means that a formerly experienced operator who has been monitoring an automated process may now be an inexperienced one. If he takes over he may set the process into oscillation…
When manual takeover is needed there is likely to be something wrong with the process, so that unusual actions will be needed to control it, and one can argue that the operator needs to be more rather than less skilled, and less rather than more loaded, than average…
If the human operator is not involved in on-line control he will not have detailed knowledge of the current state of the system. One can ask what limitations this places on the possibility for effective manual takeover, whether for stabilization or shutdown of the process, or for fault diagnosis…
Perhaps the final irony is that it is the most successful automated systems, with rare need for manual intervention, which may need the greatest investment in human operator training.
Many significant process incidents are a result of the crossover of failed automation and human operators unable to pick up and at short notice, without context understand the unfolding failure fast enough to avoid disaster. Drew Rae on his podcast Disaster cast frequently investigates and comments on these failures, particularly the subsequent investigations which often leave the operator hung out to dry.
Autonomous cars are a very interesting area where this is playing out. Currently most autonomous enabled cars available are either at level 2 or 3 autonomy — such as Tesla. These cars can autonomously monitor and handle many situations, however they require an attentive driver to be ready to take over at very short notice when a situation outside their control is encountered. Consider how dangerous it is if something goes wrong at speed, requiring a driver who has until that point not been focused on driving, to safely assess the situation and rapidly take appropriate action.
Ford have approached this differently announcing that they believe level 2 and 3 autonomy is fundamentally unsafe for the very reason of the irony of automation and that it is unfair to expect an operator to be able to jump in to save the day. They plan on moving straight to level 4 automation — where there is no steering wheel or expectation for an operator to intervene.
The irony of automation falls within a broader subset of technological issues explored by Edward Tenner in his TED talk on Unintended Consequences. This forms a natural and ever present issue we need to grapple with as technology rolls out and our lives become more and more complicated. There will undoubtedly be consequences that we do not foresee — often negative. Leaving the final word to Malcolm Gladwell in his article “Blow Up”
We have surrounded ourselves in the modern age with things like power plants and nuclear weapons systems and airports… on the understanding that the risks the represent are, at the very least, manageable. But if the potential for catastrophe is actually found in the normal functioning of complex systems, this assumption is false. Risks are not easily manageable, accidents are not easily preventable and the rituals of disaster have no meaning.
Craftsmanship — The Alternative to the Four Hour Work Week Mindset — hackernoon.com
What is missed in all of this is the mindset of craftsmanship; that one’s expertise and deliberate focus on one’s craft is actually the primary driver for success and not some crapshoot of a series of hacks.
To be successful over the course of a career requires the application and accumulation of expertise. This assumes that for any given undertaking you either provide expertise or you are just a bystander. It’s the experts that are the drivers — an expertise that is gained from a curiosity, and a mindset of treating one’s craft very seriously.
The best thing ever written about “work-life balance” — austinkleon.com
This is one of those poems you tape to the fridge. It ran in the May 18, 1998 issue of the New Yorker. You can find it in Koch’s Collected Poems. I love it
The Rise of the Full-Stack Freelancer — Praxis — praxis.fortelabs.co
Portfolio thinking recognizes that having multiple parallel projects provides many opportunities for synergy. They don’t have to interfere with and impede each other — they can actually combine into something greater than the sum of its parts. Each one can make the others easier, more fun, and more profitable.
Are ‘Ghost Rules’ Holding Your Team Back? — Accidental Creative — www.accidentalcreative.com
Have you ever walked into a company’s headquarters and passed an enormous marble wall engraved with the company’s values? There it is, in all its permanence and glory, greeting employees each day and reminding them: “THIS IS WHO WE ARE!”
What You Can Learn from Fighter Pilots About Making Fast and Accurate Decisions — www.fs.blog
Learn the 4-step process fighter pilots use to make split-second decisions when the stakes are at their highest. Also a great summary at this site
