Maybe it's not so much that a human isn't to blame in the case of an algorithm classifying something incorrectly, but that an algorithm might make mistakes that

Maybe it's not so much that a human isn't to blame in the case of an algorithm classifying something incorrectly, but that an algorithm might make mistakes that a human wouldn't. I've read a very interesting article [0] about autonomous driving recently, a discussion about the ethics and social obstacles in the way of adopting autonomous cars. The author makes the case that while algorithms might perform a task safer than humans in total but they will inevitably make mistakes. And those mistakes may well be mistakes that are trivial for a human to prevent. Algorithms making lethal mistakes that a human professional will be extremely unlikely to make, will be the hardest part to swallow if we adopt automation in critical roles - even if the total amount of deaths can be reduced that way. Even if they are safe across the board, statistically proving to people that autonomous machines perform correctly and aren't prone to obvious mistakes would take decades and billions of hours of operation to be able to make a statement about their safety relative to human performance - since lethal accidents due to human error are relatively rare events. So we are faced with a hen and egg problem in that regard. [0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/tesla-autopilot-crash-why-we-should-worry-about-a-single-death http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...