Weekend Briefing

Share this post

The Paradox of Automation

www.weekendbriefing.com

Discover more from Weekend Briefing

A Saturday morning briefing on society and innovation.
Over 188,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in

The Paradox of Automation

Kyle Westaway
Oct 15, 2016
Share this post

The Paradox of Automation

www.weekendbriefing.com
Share

The Paradox of Automation


The paradox of automation is that as things (like cars, airplanes, ships and nuclear reactors) get more automated, the operator’s skill degrades due to lack of practice.  The better the automatic systems, the more out-of-practice human operators will be, and the more extreme the situations they will have to face. Automation will routinely tidy up ordinary messes, but occasionally create an extraordinary mess. Manual control is a highly skilled activity, and skills need to be practiced continuously in order to maintain them. Yet an automatic control system that fails only rarely denies operators the opportunity for practicing these basic control skills … when manual takeover is necessary something has usually gone wrong; this means that operators need to be more rather than less skilled in order to cope with these atypical conditions. Learn more in this brilliant long form piece in The Guardian (18 minutes).

Share this post

The Paradox of Automation

www.weekendbriefing.com
Share
Comments
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Kyle Westaway
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing