5 ms·

He said "we shouldn't automate what we shouldn't automate", not "we shouldn't automate anything."

by tylerhou 8y ago

darawk 8y ago
Yes, which is a pointless tautology.
- tylerhou 8y ago
  Okay, but then your response is just as pointless as his tautology.
  - darawk 8y ago
    My point is that "should be human interactions" is a meaningless standard. The only way it could be meaningful is if it meant "anything that used to involve human interaction, and now doesn't". I was rebutting that interpretation of it, which seemed to me to be what the OP was implying.
    - candu 8y ago
      They provided a pretty clear example: actually talking to children is important to develop socialization and maturity (read: executive function). This is one area where machines absolutely cannot do the job anywhere near equally well - i.e., something that should involve human interaction.
      - darawk 8y ago
        > This is one area where machines absolutely cannot do the job anywhere near equally well Citation needed. You're neglecting the fact that there are millions of under-interacted kids in the world. Providing a cheap source of interaction for them could be extremely valuable. Just saying "their parents/teachers/whoever should do it" does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. Building them a robot does.
    - quadrangle 8y ago
      [note: this is my first post on the thread] > "should be human interactions" is a meaningless standard What irony! The entire concept is that there is a place for real human judgments and not just rigid programs/rules! What "should be human interactions" is not meaningless. It means: there should be humans judging what should be left to human judgment. It's an assertion that there ARE things that shouldn't be just standards we blindly follow. It wasn't saying any human interaction automatically matters. Tasks where a human would just follow rigid protocol are ones that should be automated…
      - darawk 8y ago
        > What "should be human interactions" is not meaningless. It means: there should be humans judging what should be left to human judgment. It's an assertion that there ARE things that shouldn't be just standards we blindly follow. You mean...humans like the humans who decided to buy this software? Presumably you don't just mean 'humans'. You mean the 'right' humans. But which humans are those? Who decides which ones the right humans are? It's just a circular argument that reduces to "humans should do human stuff", unless you want to actually articulate a standard, but you have definitely not done that yet.
        quadrangle 8y ago
        > Presumably you don't just mean 'humans' Bad presumption. The argument is about the difference between humans versus computer programs. Whichever case, I want the 'right' ones (i.e. the best ones doing good not evil), so the 'right' ones isn't the differentiation here. Whatever the argument is, there's an argument that having real people instead of programs matters for some things. And the standard we can use is something like "the things where they aren't interchangeable" at least (although others may have other qualities to emphasize). So, a person who literally just does the exact same thing a program can do can be replaced by the program. For example, data entry. A person who cannot be duplicated nearly exactly by a program is where we want to be careful about considering keeping the human position around. For example, teachers. I heard a quip that computers are passing the Turing Test more these days… but not just because they are getting more sophisticated — human beings are failing the test more (are acting more like computer programs). The point being that "human interactions" in the argument here implies humans engaged in natural human thought and intuitions and communication and not just following protocol so rigidly that they effectively are just carrying out program instructions.
- bigiain 8y ago
  Tautology yes - pointless - perhaps not. It points out that there are many things which are automatable, but that the capability to automate things cannot be the decision driver of whether things should be automated. At one end of the scale, ATMs replacing some bank tellers seems to have been widely accepted as OK. In the middle, self serve supermarket checkouts (here in .au at least) are saving staff costs for the supermarkets with the side effect of pushing shoplifting prevention and enforcement costs off to the local police instead of supermarket staff, which is not such a great automation outcome (unless you're the manager who got the bonus for reducing headcount costs at the supermarket). At the end alluded to in the discussion of this article, I think it's pretty clear that attempts to automate discipline of children is an abhorrent idea.

He said "we shouldn't automate what we shouldn't automate", not "we shouldn't automate anything."

darawk 8y ago

Yes, which is a pointless tautology.

tylerhou 8y ago
Okay, but then your response is just as pointless as his tautology.
- darawk 8y ago
  My point is that "should be human interactions" is a meaningless standard. The only way it could be meaningful is if it meant "anything that used to involve human interaction, and now doesn't". I was rebutting that interpretation of it, which seemed to me to be what the OP was implying.
  - candu 8y ago
    They provided a pretty clear example: actually talking to children is important to develop socialization and maturity (read: executive function). This is one area where machines absolutely cannot do the job anywhere near equally well - i.e., something that should involve human interaction.
    - darawk 8y ago
      > This is one area where machines absolutely cannot do the job anywhere near equally well Citation needed. You're neglecting the fact that there are millions of under-interacted kids in the world. Providing a cheap source of interaction for them could be extremely valuable. Just saying "their parents/teachers/whoever should do it" does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. Building them a robot does.
  - quadrangle 8y ago
    [note: this is my first post on the thread] > "should be human interactions" is a meaningless standard What irony! The entire concept is that there is a place for real human judgments and not just rigid programs/rules! What "should be human interactions" is not meaningless. It means: there should be humans judging what should be left to human judgment. It's an assertion that there ARE things that shouldn't be just standards we blindly follow. It wasn't saying any human interaction automatically matters. Tasks where a human would just follow rigid protocol are ones that should be automated…
    - darawk 8y ago
      > What "should be human interactions" is not meaningless. It means: there should be humans judging what should be left to human judgment. It's an assertion that there ARE things that shouldn't be just standards we blindly follow. You mean...humans like the humans who decided to buy this software? Presumably you don't just mean 'humans'. You mean the 'right' humans. But which humans are those? Who decides which ones the right humans are? It's just a circular argument that reduces to "humans should do human stuff", unless you want to actually articulate a standard, but you have definitely not done that yet.
      - quadrangle 8y ago
        > Presumably you don't just mean 'humans' Bad presumption. The argument is about the difference between humans versus computer programs. Whichever case, I want the 'right' ones (i.e. the best ones doing good not evil), so the 'right' ones isn't the differentiation here. Whatever the argument is, there's an argument that having real people instead of programs matters for some things. And the standard we can use is something like "the things where they aren't interchangeable" at least (although others may have other qualities to emphasize). So, a person who literally just does the exact same thing a program can do can be replaced by the program. For example, data entry. A person who cannot be duplicated nearly exactly by a program is where we want to be careful about considering keeping the human position around. For example, teachers. I heard a quip that computers are passing the Turing Test more these days… but not just because they are getting more sophisticated — human beings are failing the test more (are acting more like computer programs). The point being that "human interactions" in the argument here implies humans engaged in natural human thought and intuitions and communication and not just following protocol so rigidly that they effectively are just carrying out program instructions.
bigiain 8y ago
Tautology yes - pointless - perhaps not. It points out that there are many things which are automatable, but that the capability to automate things cannot be the decision driver of whether things should be automated. At one end of the scale, ATMs replacing some bank tellers seems to have been widely accepted as OK. In the middle, self serve supermarket checkouts (here in .au at least) are saving staff costs for the supermarkets with the side effect of pushing shoplifting prevention and enforcement costs off to the local police instead of supermarket staff, which is not such a great automation outcome (unless you're the manager who got the bonus for reducing headcount costs at the supermarket). At the end alluded to in the discussion of this article, I think it's pretty clear that attempts to automate discipline of children is an abhorrent idea.