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- Newsgroups: sci.space
- Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!utzoo!henry
- From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
- Subject: Re: Man in the loop
- Message-ID: <BxKnBw.4tq@zoo.toronto.edu>
- Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 21:50:18 GMT
- References: <sf0L7wq00iV0M5s30N@andrew.cmu.edu>
- Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
- Lines: 30
-
- In article <sf0L7wq00iV0M5s30N@andrew.cmu.edu> Lawrence Curcio <lc2b+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
- >Well it's strange, ain't it. Whenever there's a slow decision to be
- >made, the responsibility in a human-machine system is given to the
- >human, figuring the machine will make a mistake. (That's why we have
- >decision *support* systems instead of decision *making* systems.)
- >Whenever there's a fast decision to be made, as in fly-by-wire and
- >nuclear power plant control, the responsibility is given to the machine,
- >figuring the human will make a mistake.
-
- And they're both right, too. Machines aren't good at coping with
- unforeseen situations, hence a bias toward leaving non-time-critical
- decisions to humans. They are good at making simple decisions quickly
- hour after hour, which humans don't do well at. (A human pilot can
- fly an unstable aircraft, but it's extremely tiring and very intolerant
- of even small mistakes.)
-
- It's worse than you think, though. In automated systems like modern
- airliners, increasingly humans are placed in the role of system monitors
- rather than active participants. They are basically asked to remain
- alert for long periods of time with nothing much to do, and react quickly
- when needed... this being exactly the sort of task that *machines* do
- well and humans don't.
-
- There are many situations where a little *more* automation could do
- wonders for safety. I mean, it does not take megabytes of code to watch
- the coordinates from an inertial navigation system and turn on a warning
- light if you're about to enter Soviet airspace...
- --
- MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
- -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
-