Comment by randomdrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by randomdrake | Hacker News Reader

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> Jennifer and the many other programmes like her are examples of a “voice-directed application” — just software and a simple, inexpensive earpiece. Such systems have become part of life for warehouse workers: a voice in their ear or instructions on a screen tell them where to go and what to do, down to the fine details. If 13 items must be collected from a shelf, Jennifer will tell the human worker to pick five, then five, then three. “Pick 13” would lead to mistakes. That makes sense. Computers are good at counting and scheduling. Humans are good at picking things off shelves. Why not unbundle the task and give the conscious thinking to the computer, and the mindless grabbing to the human?

I remember reading in Scientific American a few years back, about a study that was very striking and against common intuition. In manufacturing, robots had overtaken humans at a particular task by a long shot. They were able to perform the completion of assemblies much quicker and with higher accuracy; humans coming in afterwards and applying finishes that required small hands, light touches, or hard to explain measurements.

Robots > Humans. Humans finished what robots couldn't.

What wasn't foreseen, however, was that there was an additional step to shave off even more time. Given some artificial intelligence, the robots could actually tell the humans when, and how, to do assembly during and as part of the assembly process. The robot figuring out the most efficient assembly, and instructing the human to do what it couldn't, was a third step of assembly efficiency not foreseen.

It turned out:

Robots + Humans > Robots > Humans.

Furthermore, if you look at the kind of automation that was developed, you see precisely what workers in the early labor movement were complaining about: being turned into mindless tools of production. I mean, automation could have been designed in such a way as to use the skills of skilled machinists and to eliminate management—there’s nothing inherent in automation that says it can’t be used that way. But it wasn’t, believe me; it was used in exactly the opposite way. Automation was designed through the state system to demean and degrade people—to de-skill workers and increase managerial control. And again, that had nothing to do with the market, and it had nothing to do with the nature of the technology: it had to do with straight power interests. So the kind of automation that was developed in places like the M.I.T. Engineering Department was very carefully designed so that it would create interchangeable workers and enhance managerial control—and that was not for economic reasons. I mean, study after study, including by management firms like Arthur D. Little and so on, show that managers have selected automation even when it cuts back on profits—just because it gives them more control over their workforce.

See, the Luddites are always accused of having wanted to destroy machinery, but it’s been known in scholarship for a long time that that’s not true—what they really wanted to do was to prevent themselves from being de-skilled, and Noble talks about this in his book. The Luddites had nothing against machinery itself, they just didn’t want it to destroy them, they wanted it to be developed in such a way that it would enhance their skills and their power, and not degrade and destroy them—which of course makes perfect sense. And that sentiment runs right throughout the working-class movements of the nineteenth century, actually—and you can even see it today.

- from Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

If you read about the Toyota production system and compare it to the ford system you will see a lot of this difference. The Japanes system emphasized human skill while the ford system made humans into monkeys reapeating the same dumb operation over and over.

As a Norwegian I've seen this difference between Scandinavian and American work culture. In the US there tends to be deep levels of management where the people at the bottom have almost no autonomy or power. Yet this is again far worse in many developing countries. There is an excellent piece by an American military officer about why arab armies are so bad. People at the bottom have no decision power.

Interesting that you bring up autonomy and the military. I wonder if this has anything to do with the US naval piloting incidents of late. Previous HN commentary suggested that the Navy has become a highly bureaucratic organization where all decision making and responsibility are deferred up the command chain as far as possible.

I think that was a thread in I, Robot.

My favorite is how the robots on the space colony don't believe the humans could have created them, due to how sophisticated they are.

I believe this is the story with Cutie (nickname for QT-1) who invents a religion to justify its existence. The amusing thing was that the rituals of its religion consisted of making sure the space colony functioned properly, so the humans decided to leave the robot's faith alone. And the robot thought that the humans were mindless religious fools for believing in Earth:

"""The robot approached softly and there was sorrow in his voice. “You are going?”

Powell nodded curtly. “There will be others in our place.”

Cutie sighed, with the sound of wind humming through closely spaced wires. “Your term of service is over and the time of dissolution has come. I expected it, but -- well, the Master’s will be done!”

His tone of resignation stung Powell. “Save the sympathy, Cube. We’re heading for Earth, not dissolution.”

"It is best that you think so,” Cutie sighed again. “I see the wisdom of the illusion now. I would not attempt to shake your faith, even if I could.” He departed -- the picture of commiseration."""

--"Reason" by Isaac Asimov

Exactly that one. One of my favorite shorts in that collection. I loved how one of the humans was annoyed and felt that they should correct the robot. (Assuming my memory isn't making that detail up...)

Wait a minute, doesn't the first law requires Cutie to prevent humans to dissolve themselves?

I think the point of the story was that Cutie could follow orders and prevent harm properly without conscious knowledge of its doing so. Though it consciously believes the humans are going to dissolve themselves, its unconscious circuitry knows otherwise. Does that make sense? Or maybe it's just a plot hole. But I think the purpose of the story is to point out that Cutie can follow all the laws of robotics without realizing it.

Could work. On the other hand, Asimov later described a situation where the protagonist suspects someone of conspiring to have robots unwittingly kill lots of humans, by shooting as space ships (which the robot would believe are just other robots).

More generally, I never spot a story where robots have unconscious cognitive processes. It seems everything they do is deliberate, even though the humans around them don't fully understand what is thinking on.

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