Difference between revisions of "Advanced automation/People in control"
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| − | These systems needs to be carefully controlled by people. We will always need to understand how they work, at every level, and they will need to be monitored. Some people wonder whether we will get to a stage where the machines are so sophisticated, and we have relied on them for so long, that no-one will actually know how they work, and therefore we will not be fully in control of them. The reality is that there will always be people interested in this sort of thing - engineers, scientists and geeks in general. They want to know how to make things and understand how they work. There always have been | + | These systems needs to be carefully controlled by people. We will always need to understand how they work, at every level, and they will need to be monitored. Some people wonder whether we will get to a stage where the machines are so sophisticated, and we have relied on them for so long, that no-one will actually know how they work, and therefore we will not be fully in control of them. The reality is that there will always be people interested in this sort of thing - engineers, scientists and geeks in general. They want to know how to make things and understand how they work. There always have been technically-minded people, and have no doubt there always will be. |
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| − | People will need to improve the designs and make sure they are safe and efficient. We must | + | People will need to improve the designs and make sure they are safe and efficient. We must always remain part of the loop in terms of ultimate control. It is highly likely that we will develop computer-controlled systems more capable at certain tasks than we are, in fact we already have done, but this trend will inevitably continue until there is very little in terms of systems control that can't be done better by a computer. But however sophisticated these systems become they are still just tools for our service {{em}} a means to an end. There will always be a threshold where higher-level decisions can only be made with the judgement of people, communities or wider society, and it is important that this threshold should not creep upwards unnoticed over time. |
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Latest revision as of 00:12, 11 March 2010
These systems needs to be carefully controlled by people. We will always need to understand how they work, at every level, and they will need to be monitored. Some people wonder whether we will get to a stage where the machines are so sophisticated, and we have relied on them for so long, that no-one will actually know how they work, and therefore we will not be fully in control of them. The reality is that there will always be people interested in this sort of thing - engineers, scientists and geeks in general. They want to know how to make things and understand how they work. There always have been technically-minded people, and have no doubt there always will be.
People will need to improve the designs and make sure they are safe and efficient. We must always remain part of the loop in terms of ultimate control. It is highly likely that we will develop computer-controlled systems more capable at certain tasks than we are, in fact we already have done, but this trend will inevitably continue until there is very little in terms of systems control that can't be done better by a computer. But however sophisticated these systems become they are still just tools for our service — a means to an end. There will always be a threshold where higher-level decisions can only be made with the judgement of people, communities or wider society, and it is important that this threshold should not creep upwards unnoticed over time.
