Applying Bainbridge's "Ironies of Automation" to Modern AI and LLM Systems
By
BinaryIgor
Slow-proofed and worth the wait. Worth its weight in flour.
Summary
This article continues a discussion of Lisanne Bainbridge's 1983 paper "The ironies of automation" and applies its insights to current AI and LLM-based automation of white-collar work. The piece examines the second chapter "Approaches to solutions" from Bainbridge's paper, exploring how historical observations about automation ironies remain relevant to modern AI systems that still require human oversight despite their advanced capabilities.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledIn the previous post, we discussed several observations, Lisanne Bainbridge made in her much-noticed paper 'The ironies of automation', she published in 1983 and what they mean for the current 'white-collar' work automation attempts leveraging LLMs and AI agents based on LLMs, still requiring humans in the loop.
We stopped at the end of the first chapter, 'Introduction', of the paper.
In this post, we will continue with the second chapter, 'Approaches to solutions', and see what we can learn there.
Comparing apples and oranges?
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