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A U TO M AT E WITH CAUTION:
LEARNINGS OF A HISTORY
by shane saunderson |
photo by louis reed
As a researcher in Human-Robot Interaction, a lecturer in digital transformation, and a historian of all things automated, I am constantly surprised by the consistent failure of organizations deploying automation. I speak broadly here of automation: technologies that execute multi-step processes with minimal human intervention. More colloquially, I’m talking about robots, AI, IoT, chatbots, computerization, assembly lines, and even Jacquard looms. What these things all have in common is that we keep implementing them in the same narrow-sighted and preventable way. We keep thinking that the point of automation is the technology itself, but like all things in this world, what should really matter is how it helps people. But don’t worry… you can avoid this pitfall without even much difficulty, so long as you’re willing to do the work. Automation fails in organizations when it dehumanizes us. It is that simple. However, the ways in which automation has the potential to dehumanize us can be much more complex. The luddites were skilled textiles workers in the 18th century whose livelihoods were threatened by lower-cost, low-skilled
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labourers that factory owners were able to hire as looms became increasingly automated. This shift in operation not only devalued they pay off textiles workers but also the skillset and culture many had spent a lifetime developing. They rioted throughout parts of England and destroyed automation equipment in an attempt to halt the evolution of textile mills and protest the erosion of social orders such as weavers’ guilds. However, their struggle was not with automation itself, but the deceitful practices of factory owners and the harsh economic conditions following the Napoleonic Wars that were only further exacerbated by employers seeking less skilled, low-wage labourers. In essence, luddites – a term now commonly associated with distain for technology – were not opposed to technology per se, but to the undermining of their purpose, expertise, and livelihoods. Though fascination with creating forms of artificial life date back to the Zhou dynasty in China and the ancient Greeks, the emergence of cybernetics out of World War II rekindled enthusiasm around the idea of thinking machines, but was met with an equal dose of incredulity. While early cyberneticists dreamed of futures