Computers are taking over the kinds of knowledge work long considered the preserve of well-educated, well-trained professionals. Luci Gutiérrez
[From article]
Worrisome evidence suggests that our own intelligence is withering as we become more dependent on the artificial variety. Rather than lifting us up, smart software seems to be dumbing us down.
It has been a slow process. The first wave of automation rolled through U.S. industry after World War II, when manufacturers began installing electronically controlled equipment in their plants. [. . .] The new technology would be ennobling.
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More often than not, the new machines were leaving workers with drabber, less demanding jobs. An automated milling machine, for example, didn’t transform the metalworker into a more creative artisan; it turned him into a pusher of buttons.
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Computers are taking over the kinds of knowledge work long considered the preserve of well-educated, well-trained professionals: Pilots rely on computers to fly planes; doctors consult them in diagnosing ailments; architects use them to design buildings.
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“Flying skills decay quite rapidly towards the fringes of ‘tolerable’ performance without relatively frequent practice,” Mr. Ebbatson concluded. But computers now handle most flight operations between takeoff and touchdown—so “frequent practice” is exactly what pilots are not getting.
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In other words, our skills get sharper only through practice, when we use them regularly to overcome different sorts of difficult challenges.
The goal of modern software, by contrast, is to ease our way through such challenges. Arduous, painstaking work is exactly what programmers are most eager to automate—after all, that is where the immediate efficiency gains tend to lie. In other words, a fundamental tension ripples between the interests of the people doing the automation and the interests of the people doing the work.
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The programs incorporate valuable checklists and alerts, but they also make medicine more routinized and formulaic—and distance doctors from their patients.
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A professor from Harvard Medical School wrote in a journal article that when doctors become ‘screen-driven,’ following a computer’s prompts rather than ‘the patient’s narrative thread,’ their thinking can become constricted. In the worst cases, they may miss important diagnostic signals. Getty Images
Medical software, they write, is no “replacement for basic history-taking, examination skills, and critical thinking.”
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When software takes over, manual skills wane.
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When system designers begin a project, they first consider the capabilities of computers, with an eye toward delegating as much of the work as possible to the software. The human operator is assigned whatever is left over, which usually consists of relatively passive chores such as entering data, following templates and monitoring displays.
This philosophy traps people in a vicious cycle of de-skilling. By isolating them from hard work, it dulls their skills and increases the odds that they will make mistakes. When those mistakes happen, designers respond by seeking to further restrict people’s responsibilities—spurring a new round of de-skilling.
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Even the smartest software lacks the common sense, ingenuity and verve of the skilled professional. In cockpits, offices or examination rooms, human experts remain indispensable. Their insight, ingenuity and intuition, honed through hard work and seasoned real-world judgment, can’t be replicated by algorithms or robots.
If we let our own skills fade by relying too much on automation, we are going to render ourselves less capable, less resilient and more subservient to our machines. We will create a world more fit for robots than for us.
http://online.wsj.com/
Automation Makes Us Dumb
Human intelligence is withering as computers do more, but there’s a solution.
By NICHOLAS CARR
Nov. 21, 2014 12:02 p.m. ET
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