Paradox of Automation
Everywhere you look we try to make things easier for ourselves. One-click purchases. One-button coffee beverages. Autocorrect. Email automations. Purchase recommendations (“People who watched X also watched Y”). We build technology to anticipate our wants and automate our needs.
I am both amazed and appalled by what Generative AI makes possible. I’m not a luddite, but I do think we should be cautious about handing everything over to the machine. There is a great non-AI discussion about this very paradox in Tim Harford’s book Messy (about creative thinking). Here are his three arguments against automation:
Automation accommodates incompetence. These systems are easy to operate. They often automatically correct human input errors (think: Autocorrect). Result: your incompetence goes unnoticed because the machine covers for you.
Automation removes the need for practice. These systems lull us to sleep. We don’t practice because we don’t have to. Result: Your skills decline because you don’t use them frequently enough.
Automation fails in unusual situations. These systems are built to serve the most common cases. They aren't well-prepared for anomalies. Result: The machine overcompensates (or hallucinates!) exacerbating the problem.
Our current love affair with AI parallels this paradox of automation. Want to research something? Don’t know where to start? Type your half-baked question in the chat window and wait for ChatGPT and friends to work their magic.
I work hard to generate interesting ideas and deliver novel experiences for people who learn with me. However, AI doesn’t work well in these spaces. It doesn’t make leaps in logic. It doesn’t make novel associations. It spits out patterns. Yes, it can churn through data faster than me, but it rarely generates something truly interesting or unique.
Want to do meaningful work? Keep AI on a leash. Take it for a walk, but make sure you do the leading.
Give me some messiness. Give me some struggle. Make me practice. With enough time, I will flounder my way to flourishing. Now, that sounds more like a human experience.
Inspiration
Harford, T. (2016). Messy: How to be creative and resilient in a tidy-minded world. London, UK: Little, Brown. (Chapter 7: “Automation”)