Tuesday 21 September 2021

The State of Human-Centredness in AI and automation

 There is much talk about a human-centred approach to AI, and using AI to provide Intelligence Augmentation. For example, this talk contrasts AI as a magic beanstalk vs. AI as a tool for human use.

This post examines the practical likelihood of achieving such aims at any scale, and reviews the forces opposing the adoption of a human-centred approach to automation. Scott Berkun has done us a favour by writing an excellent example of a plea for human-centredness in design - just the sort of thing that has been ignored for decades: "We need to shift how we measure progress away from the potential in a technology and toward what people are actually able to achieve with it.... Everyone, from consumers to programmers to business leaders, must become more educated about what good design really means. For consumers, this isn’t necessarily to become designers themselves, but to become better judges of the true value of things before they buy them. Technologists and businesspeople need to understand the common traps that lead to bad design and do what they can to reduce them. This is often as simple as valuing design experts enough to listen to them at the start of projects when the important decisions are made, rather than at the end when their advice will be far too late." 

This post makes the safe assumption that Scott will be ignored, and attempts to probe the how and why of that.

In the beginning..

Nehemiah Jordan worked for RAND Corporation on the SAGE air defence system. In a series of articles in Psych. Rev. (1963), he outlined most of the human problems with introducing automation. He wrote up the lessons learned in the classic book 'Themes in Speculative Psychology' (1968). Two quotes are relevant here - on motivation, and on Allocation of Function (to human or machine).

Motivation

"In designing a complex  man-machine system one should consider the human performance necessary for the system, not only from an instrumental standpoint, but also from a consummatory standpoint that is; how satisfying the job is per se. For jobs to be satisfying three conditions seen to be necessary and sufficient; they must demand of the operator the utilization of skills; they must be meaningful;- and the operator must have real responsibility. It was also asserted that although human factors engineering neglected the consummately standpoint, as long as machines were relatively crude, this neglect was not critical. With the mushrooming development of automation, however, we cannot afford this luxury any more, In designing and thinking about our new complex automated man-machine systems we must take the consummatory standpoint into account, we must learn to design for men jobs that are intrinsically interesting and satisfying."

Allocation of Function

"In other words, to the extent that man becomes comparable to a machine we do not really need him any more since he can be replaced by a machine. This necessary consequence was actually reached, but not recognized, in a later paper, also a fundamental and significant paper in human factor engineering literature. In 1954 Birmingham and Taylor in their paper: ‘A Design Philosophy for Man-Machine Control Systems’, write:‘... speaking mathematically, he (man) is best when doing least’ [1, p. 1752]. The conclusion is inescapable - design the man out of the system. If he does best when he does least, the least he can do is zero. But then the conclusion is also ridiculous....

I suggest that ‘complementary’ is probably the correct concept to use in discussing the allocation of tasks to men and to machines. Rather than compare men and machines as to which is better for getting a task done, let us think about how we complement men by machines, and vice versa, to get a task done.

As soon as we start to think this way, we find that we have to start thinking differently. The term ‘allocation of tasks to men and machines’ becomes meaningless. Rather we are forced to think about a task that can be done by men and machines. The concept ‘task’ ceases to be the smallest unit of analysis for designing man-machine systems, though still remaining the basic unit in terms of which the analysis makes sense. The task now consists of actions, or better still activities, which have to be shared by men and machines. There is nothing strange about this. In industrial chemistry the molecule is the fundamental unit for many purposes and it doesn’t disturb anybody that some of these molecules consist of hundreds, if not thousands, of atoms. The analysis of man-machine systems should therefore consist of specifications of tasks and activities necessary to accomplish the tasks. Man and machine should complement each other in getting these activities done in order to accomplish the task.

It is possible that with a shift to emphasizing man-machine comparability, new formats for system analysis and design will have to be developed, and these formats may pose a problem. I am convinced, however, that as soon as we begin thinking in proper units, this problem will be solved with relative ease. Regardless of whether this is so, one can now already specify several general principles that may serve as basic guidelines for complementing men and machines."

John Allspaw has a thread on Fitts List and the un-Fitts List here.

From the outset, we knew that the design of automation should follow from the design of jobs. Simplistically, a Plan-Design-Check-Act  (PDCA) cycle for job and organization design drives a PDCA cycle for automation. We also knew not to do 'job design by left-overs' i.e. automate that which is easy to automate, and leave people to do the rest.

As you will be aware, this is not what has happened.

Why is human-centred automation so rare compared to human replacement automation?

Chris Boorman (@CHBoorman) - in a long-gone blog post - contrasted cost-reduction human replacement automation with human centred automation: "Automation is an essential capability for enterprises seeking to innovate – whether through internal channels, acquisition or partnership. Gartner has previously stated that for many organizations 80% of time can be spent on day-to-day processes, or ‘keeping the lights on’ and this is not sustainable if they are to continue to win market share and grow in increasingly competitive markets.
Automation enables enterprises to automate those core processes not to make cuts, but to free up resource to work on new disruptive projects. Faced with an increasingly complex world of technology - cloud, mobile, big data, internet of things - as well as growing consumer expectations, every business needs to turn to automation or perish.
Automation needs to be ingrained in an organization’s DNA early on and not deployed later as a replacement measure for existing job functions. It should instead be used to allow people and resources to be more focused on driving the business forwards, rather than on just keeping the lights on.
Every industry is going through a period of change as new technologies and new entrants look to disrupt the status-quo. Automation is a key enabler for helping enterprises to disrupt their own industries and drive that change. Acquiring new customers, retaining customers, driving business analytics, consolidating enterprises following mergers or driving agility and speed are all critical business imperatives. Automation delivers the efficiency and enables the new way of thinking from your brightest talent to succeed
."

Prefix capitalism has devised the worst of both worlds with pre-automation: "We define pre-automation as the coincident, strategic effort to scale a workforce and monopolize a distribution network via platform while simultaneously investing in its automated replacement."

Frank Pasquale puts it this way: "All too often, the automation literature is focused on replacing humans, rather than respecting their hopes, duties, and aspirations. A central task of educators, managers, and business leaders should be finding ways to complement a workforce’s existing skills, rather than sweeping that workforce aside. That does not simply mean creating workers with skill sets that better “plug into” the needs of machines, but also, doing the opposite: creating machines that better enhance and respect the abilities and needs of workers. That would be a “machine age” welcoming for all, rather than one calibrated to reflect and extend the power of machine owners."

Well-run organizations with a human-centred approach e.g. using Henry Stewart's Happy Manifesto or ISO 27500:2016 would have no great problem with human-centred automation. Similarly, proper Lean organizations such as Toyota. However, such organizations are rare and against the grain. Theory Y is rare compared to Theory X in practice. Bullshit Jobs (Graeber) are everywhere, and organizations seem to have adopted The Gervais Principle (Rao) as a manual. In developing ISO TS 18152 we found that to link job design and automation took a ton of activities at all levels of management, and at all stages of the lifecycle. Current organizations and project structures really do not do human-centredness unless forced to.

Hostile business models have more or less stopped any chance of positive User Experience (UX), as noted by Mark Hurst here. Prefix Capitalism (Tante) is propagating Chickenized Reverse Centaurs (Cory Doctorow) https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex , shitty automation, the surveillance panopticon, with added ethicswashing. A human-centred approach to the financialised world would include the challenging task of supporting 'investee activism' (Feher) and 'arts of doing' (De Certeau).

Globalization and expansion to society level

Automation has extended to a global level, interacting with society as a whole (e.g. Facebook algorithms, where user issues include privacy and identity - a long way from issues of numbers of mouse clicks). This is being addressed as a battle of words between The Lords of the Valley and elected politicians. Going swimmingly. The European Union seems to be the regulator for Silicon Valley, but the focus is on software and data. The reaction by Google and others to the proposed EC AI Regulation more or less demonstrates its necessity. The EC proposed Regulation addresses important risks, but does not attempt to meet the stated aim of being human-centric. Niels Bjorn- Andersen (1985) raised the question of “whether all our (the HF community) intellectual capacity, energy and other precious resources are being utilized to:
- Soften the technology to make it more compatible with human beings (through removing the flicker in order not to damage the eyes, detaching the keyboard in order not to damage the back of the operator, making it so easy to use that “even a child or a mentaly retarded person can use it” etc.) and in this way provide a sugar coating on the pill so that it may be swallowed more easily, or whether
- we are genuinely contributing to the attainment of true human values.

(Bjorn- Andersen, N. ‘Are “Human Factors” human?’, Contribution to Man Machine Integration, State of the Art Report, Pergamon Infotec, Jan 1985.)

The EC proposed Regulation is definitely in the first camp, as has been pointed out by ETUI and here.

In contrast, the Principles of Human Centred Design (ISO 9241-210:2019) are:

  1. The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks and environments
  2. Users are involved throughout design and development
  3. The design is driven and refined by user-centred evaluation
  4. The process is iterative
  5. The design addresses the whole user experience
  6. The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives

At a society level, the analysis of a potential 'robot takeover' is being done in a top down manner by *economists* using a watered-down version of Fitts List, and Human Replacement Automation. What could possibly go wrong? (A succinct thoughtful analysis of jobs and automation is provided by Benanav).

The relationship between people and nature has lost much in the change from 'indigenous' to 'urban'. This piece uses 'human-centred' in a valid accusatory manner. The defence of human-centredness would be to say that the design intent of suburban life being criticised is 'less-than-human centred' and that the relationship with nature is a part of human-centredness. However, it would be hard to find examples in practice so labelled - a hypothetical defence using a possible future human-centredness.

State of human-centredness and AI / ML

Some sectors have taken a human-centred approach to AI/ML in their sector:

Autonomous Urbanism and NACTO "The cautious optimism that characterized the first edition of the Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism, published in 2017, has been tempered by recognition of the enormity of the policy foundation that must be laid for us to reach a human-focused autonomous future. Like the first Blueprint, this edition lays out a vision for how autonomous vehicles, and technology more broadly, can work in service of safe, sustainable, equitable, vibrant cities. This vision builds on and reinforces the past decade of transformative city transportation practice. It prioritizes people walking, biking, rolling, and taking transit, putting people at the center of urban life and street design, while taking advantage of new technologies in order to reduce carbon emissions, decrease traffic fatalities, and increase economic opportunities....Automation without a comprehensive overhaul of how our streets are designed, allocated, and shared will not result in substantive safety, sustainability, or equity gains. By implementing proactive policies today, cities can act to ensure that the adoption of AV technologies improves transportation outcomes rather than leading to an overall increase in driving."

The American Medical Association has a policy: "Our AMA advocates that:

  • AI is designed to enhance human intelligence and the patient-physician relationship rather than replace it Oversight and regulation of health care AI systems must be based on risk of harm and benefit accounting for a host of factors, including but not limited to: intended and reasonably expected use(s); evidence of safety, efficacy and equity, including addressing bias; AI system methods; level of automation; transparency; and conditions of deployment
  • Payment and coverage for all health care AI systems must be conditioned on complying with all appropriate federal and state laws and regulations, including but not limited to those governing patient safety, efficacy, equity, truthful claims, privacy and security, as well as state medical practice and licensure laws
  • Payment and coverage for health care AI systems intended for clinical care must be conditioned on•Clinical validation•Alignment with clinical decision-making that is familiar to physicians•High-quality clinical evidence
  • Payment and coverage for health care AI systems must •Be informed by real-world workflow and human-centered design principles•Enable physicians to prepare for and transition to new care delivery models•Support effective communication and engagement between patients, physicians and the health care team•Seamlessly integrate clinical, administrative and population health management functions into workflow•Seek end-user feedback to support iterative product improvement
  • Payment and coverage policies must advance affordability and access to AI systems that are designed for small physician practices and patients and not limited to large practices and institutions
  • Government-conferred exclusivities and intellectual property laws are meant to foster innovation, but constitute interventions into the free market, and therefore should be appropriately balanced with the need for competition, access and affordability."

While welcome, the state of such initiatives is orders of magnitude less than what is needed - even within healthcare AI. The state of ML in healthcare seems pretty much GIGO, see here and here and here and here and here . Also, this paper on the myth of generalisability in ML would have been transformed by a modicum of understanding of 'context of use' and 'Quality In Use'.

In the context of 'killer robots', there are no abstracts on "meaningful human control" (as of 04 May 2021) in psyarxiv and 2 in CS arxiv - one of which is relevant.

More generally, a search of Arxiv CS (27/3/2021) revealed 3573 refs to "gradient descent" (as a baseline), 13 refs to "hybrid intelligence", 3 refs to "augmented intelligence", 3 to Licklider, 0 to Engelbart. A search of Psyarxiv showed 0 refs to "augmented intelligence" and 1 ref to "hybrid intelligence".

While there is good work going on, it is not moving the needle at all. Alan Winfield has summarised his situation here: "We roboticists used to justifiably claim that robots would do jobs that are too dull, dirty and dangerous for humans. It is now clear that working as human assistants to robots and AIs in the 21st century is dull, and both physically and/or psychologically dangerous. One of the foundational promises of robotics has been broken. This makes me sad, and very angry."

The 'think like a Centaur' work at OIO on Roby and its successors is the exception that proves the rule.

Conclusions

There has been a line of work looking at the Human Factors of automation (e.g. Bainbridge's Ironies of Automation), characterized by good technical quality and massive lack of impact. Nearly all automated systems still make the same well-documented mistakes first noted by Jordan. At a practical level, these adverse consequences of poor automation can normally be addressed by mainstream risk / issue management. This very rarely happens.  Indeed, it seems harder to introduce usable technology now that it was in the past. The between technical activity and concern for people seems deeply embedded and hard to bridge. The problems of automation and algorithms are not new or transitory. Very likely they go back to the beginnings of labour, capital, and debt (e.g. when storing grain became possible).

The Western capitalist hegemony is deeply antithetical to human-centredness (remember that the subtitle of 'Small is Beautiful' was 'Economics as if people mattered' - hardly the Amazon corporate handbook), from the level of a corporate project through to societal effects. Competent practitioners with good stakeholder support can show what can be done, but Human Centred Design will remain a niche activity. If human-centredness is to make any impact at all, then it is time for some completely fresh approaches. Fortunately, the time is ripe for just such fresh approaches but the scale of the opportunity is somewhat daunting.

In conclusion, this Arthur C. Clarke quote on automation and jobs from 1969:

GENE: But you see the average person doesn’t see it. All he sees is that he’s going to be replaced by a computer, reduced to an IBM card and filed away.

CLARKE: The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.

GENE: Precisely. Now, we feel that if only this idea had come across in “2001,” instead of depicting machines as ominous and destructive. . .

CLARKE: But it would have been another film. Be thankful for what you’ve got. Maybe Stanley wasn’t interested in making that kind of film.

Engineers and Human Values

 “If it weren't for the people, the god-damn people' said Finnerty, 'always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren't for them, the world would be an engineer's paradise.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

"Nice thread, but thinking of AI as “user-centered” is a narrow view. Shouldn’t the real goal of AI be to create truly autonomous intelligent beings rather than servants for human purposes? We’re just building smarter screwdrivers today." Ali Minai @barbarikon

The failure of engineers to understand user and stakeholder needs and values is an old problem. From Plato and his Dialogues "The Republic"
[suggestion - read painter / imitator as marketing]:

“Will a painter, say, paint reins and bridle?” “But a saddler and a smith will make them?” “Certainly.”
“Does the painter know what the reins and the bridle ought to be like? Or is it the case that not even the smith and the saddler, who made them, know that, but only the horseman, the man who knows how to use them?” “Very true.”
“And shall we not say the same about everything?” “What?”
“That there are three arts concerned with each thing —one that uses, one that makes, and one that imitates?” “
“Then are the virtue and beauty and correctness of every manufactured article and living creature and action determined by any other consideration than the use for which each is designed by art or nature?” “Then it is quite inevitable that the user of each thing should have most experience of it, and should be the perso.n to inform the maker what are the good and bad points of the instrument as he uses it. For example, the flute-player informs the flute-maker about the flutes which are to serve him in his fluting; he will prescribe how they ought to be made. and the. maker will serve him” “Surely.”
‘ Then he who knows gives information about good and bad flutes, and the other will make them, relying on his statements?” “Yes.”
“Then the maker of any article will have a right belief concerning its beauty or badness, which he derives from his association with the knower, and from listening, as he is compelled to do, to what the knower says; but the user has knowledge?” “Certainly.”

This post is partly in response to a well-considered article on the need for engineers to understand human values and adopt systems thinking here. The concern with the article is that its aspirations are doomed.

 Update: To an extent, it could be considered a diagnosis of the 'Engineer's Disease' discussed here, with differing versions here and here. I was alerted to the disease by Paul Graham Raven with this post.

I have had the pleasure and privilege to work with folk from many different backgrounds who have practiced Human Centred Design (HCD) well. Engineers who 'get' human values and HCD can be powerful forces for good. However, they are the exception that proves the rule. Building artefacts that reflect human values needs multi-disciplinary teamwork if the process is to deliver dependably. The idea that engineers can embrace the consideration of human values as a result of a training course is a doomed hope. This post presents some of the ways in which engineers frequently and persistently fail to consider human values. The logic is that any one of these ways can be sufficient to prevent a system reflecting human values.

Autogamous technology

Gene I Rochlin defined autogamous technology as self-pollinating and self-fertilizing, responding more and more to an inner logic of development than the needs an desires of the user community. The term has not found widespread use. However, the existence of such technology is widespread, perhaps characterized by the Internet Fridge, and the Internet of Shit.  Is it realistic to expect engineers to be able to answer 'Question Zero' here - quite probably not. If not engineers, then who?

Nigel Bevan persuaded the software standards community that the purpose of quality during design was to achieve Quality In Use (QIU).  Why else would anyone build a system? This post does not get to the bottom of that question but provides some pointers as to why building a system that does not reflect human needs and values is routine.

Monastic seclusion

The archetypal approach to engineering is for one or more engineers to work in a lab or garage to bring their creation to life. This is a secluded environment, free of distractions. The Human Centred Design approach is very out-and-about and social, listening to users and stakeholders, trying things out, and working in a multi-disciplinary team (see below). Many engineers (and egotistical industrial designers) treat such an approach with contempt and see it as interfering with real work.

Principles of Human-Centred Design ISO 9241-210:2019
5.2 The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks and environments
5.3 Users are involved throughout design and development
5.4 The design is driven and refined by user-centred evaluation
5.5 The process is iterative
5.6 The design addresses the whole user experience
5.7 The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives

In 'What Engineers Know and How They Know It', Walter Vicente says  "artifactual design is a social activity." Chapter 3 of the book gives an account of how flying qualities were re-conceptualized over a ten year period of engineers and pilots working very closely as a team.

In some situations, it is possible for engineers to relate to the user and context of use directly. For example, Toyota engineers:

'As Kousuke Shiramizu, Lexus quality guru and executive vice president explains, “ Engineers who have never set foot in Beverly Hills have no business designing a Lexus.Nor has anybody who has never experienced driving on the Autobahn firsthand.”'

"The story concerns a chief engineer who moved in with a young target family in southern California to enhance his understanding of the generation X lifestyle associated with RAV Four customers. While developing Toyota’s successful 2003 Sienna, the Sienna CE drove his team in Toyota’s previous minivan model more than 50,000 miles across North America through every part of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The CE experienced a visceral lesson in what is important to the North American minivan driver and discovered in every locale new opportunities for improving the current product. As a result, the Sienna was made big enough to hold full sheets of plywood while the turning radius was tightened, more cupholders were added, and cross-wind stability was enhanced, among many other improvements that resulted from this experience."

Both of the above from 'The Toyota Product Development System' by James M. Morgan and Jeffrey K. Liker

In other situations, the impact of as proposed system on various groups and their context of use may not be intelligible or accessible directly, and a plan of work is required, possibly including the use of resources such as ergonomists or anthropologists.

Engineering values and humanity

Nicholas Carr hits the nail on the head about the values implicit in automation here. "Google’s Android guru, Sundar Pichai, provides a peek into the company’s conception of our automated future:
“Today, computing mainly automates things for you, but when we connect all these things, you can truly start assisting people in a more meaningful way,” Mr. Pichai said. He suggested a way for Android on people’s smartphones to interact with Android in their cars. “If I go and pick up my kids, it would be good for my car to be aware that my kids have entered the car and change the music to something that’s appropriate for them,” Mr. Pichai said.

What’s illuminating is not the triviality of Pichai’s scenario — that billions of dollars might be invested in developing a system that senses when your kids get in your car and then seamlessly cues up “Baby Beluga” — but what the urge to automate small, human interactions reveals about Pichai and his colleagues. With this offhand example, Pichai gives voice to Silicon Valley’s reigning assumption, which can be boiled down to this: Anything that can be automated should be automated. If it’s possible to program a computer to do something a person can do, then the computer should do it. That way, the person will be “freed up” to do something “more valuable.” Completely absent from this view is any sense of what it actually means to be a human being. Pichai doesn’t seem able to comprehend that the essence, and the joy, of parenting may actually lie in all the small, trivial gestures that parents make on behalf of or in concert with their kids — like picking out a song to play in the car. Intimacy is redefined as inefficiency.

I guess it’s no surprise that what Pichai expresses is a robot’s view of technology in general and automation in particular — mindless, witless, joyless; obsessed with productivity, oblivious to life’s everyday textures and pleasures. But it is telling. What should be automated is not what can be automated but what should be automated
." [emphasis added].

Abeba Birhane et al have ascertained the values implicit in ML here:

"We reject the vague conceptualization of the discipline of ML as value-neutral. Instead, we investigate the ways that the discipline of ML is inherently value-laden. Our analysis of highly influential papers in the discipline finds that they not only favor the needs of research communities and large firms over broader social needs, but also that they take this favoritism for granted. The favoritism manifests in the choice of projects, the lack of consideration of potential negative impacts, and the prioritization and operationalization of values such as performance, generalization, efficiency, and novelty. These values are operationalized in ways that disfavor societal needs, usually without discussion or acknowledgment. Moreover, we uncover an overwhelming and increasing presence of big tech and elite universities in highly cited papers, which is consistent with a system of powercentralizing value-commitments. The upshot is that the discipline of ML is not value-neutral. We find that it is socially and politically loaded, frequently neglecting societal needs and harms, while prioritizing and promoting the concentration of power in the hands of already powerful actors."

User information needs

Bainbridge's Ironies of automation here are still unresolved and the problems of supervisory control frequently unaddressed. Donald Michie wrote about the need for a 'human window' into AI systems in the 1980's. Forty years later, the ML community sees even 'syntactic sugar' (Michie) as an optional research topic. In a sense this is a continuation of the failure-prone 'strong, silent automation' (Woods). Briefly put, engineers left to themselves will continue to ignore user information needs.

Belletristic vs. practical approach to work

Look around design offices or software development offices and examine the books; manuals, catalogues, standards. For all practical purposes you will not find an anthropology journal. Researching human values, societal impact etc. is the bookish sort of activity that design engineers don't do. Engineers also tend to ask how not why.

Stack fallacy

Stack fallacy - here -  is the mistaken belief that it is trivial to build the layer above yours. The Socio-Technical System that an engineered artefact enters may be several layers above the competence of the engineers involved.

"The bottleneck for success often is not knowledge of the tools, but lack of understanding of the customer needs. Database engineers know almost nothing about what supply chain software customers want or need. They can hire for that, but it is not a core competency."

Prometheanism

In 'Technics and Time', Bernard Stiegler says "as a 'process of exteriorization,' technics is the pursuit of life by means other than life"

Adrienne Mayor (here) has shown that the quest to build 'life through craft' - biotechne - goes back at least as far as Classical times, with Talos.

This post is first step over some deep waters. Relevant writers include Romanyshyn, Yuk Hui, Dryzek etc.but the drive to create a machine that is monstrous and to then abdicate responsibility for it (Facebook, Amazon, and others) indicates a deeply-held darkness in our psyche and culture.

Transcendence

David Noble has studied the ways in which religion (forms of Christianity) and technology are intertwined, and examined the religious motivation behind the development of technology.

"When people wonder why the new technologies so rarely seem adequately to meet their human and social needs, they assume it is because of the greed and lust for power that motivate those who design and deploy them. Certainly, this has much to do with it. But it is not
the whole of the story. On a deeper cultural level, these technologies have not met basic human needs because, at bottom, they have never really been about meeting them. They have been aimed rather at the loftier goal of transcending such mortal concerns altogether. In such
an ideological context, inspired more by prophets than by profits, the needs neither of mortals nor of the earth they inhabit are of any enduring consequence. And it is here that the religion of technology can rightly be considered a menace. (Lynn White, for example, long ago identified the ideological roots of the ecological crisis in "the Christian dogma of man's transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature"; more recently, the ecologist Philip Regal has likewise traced current justifications of unregulated bioengineering to their source in late-medieval natural theology
.)" (The Religion of Technology, p206- 207)

Featuritis as a substitute for understanding use

"Creativity is not a process...It’s people who care enough to keep thinking about something until they find the simplest way to do it." Tim Cook

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.” — Charles Mingus.

 "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The problems with simplicity are as follows:

  1. Lots of engineers do not care enough about user need or societal impact to keep thinking about it (cf. Tim Cook).
  2. Lots of engineers want the machine they are bringing to life to be as advanced and complicated as possible.
  3. Finding simplicity that gives a Happy User Peak (Kathy Sierra below) means getting out of the lab and listening to people.
  4. Adding in loads of features means there is bound to be something for everybody (if they can find it}.
  5. More features means you are on the job for longer.

"Creeping featurism ... is the tendency to add to the number of functions that a device can perform, often extending the number beyond all reason." Don Norman. The alternative to simplicity is typified by featuritis - here, here and here (Kathy Sierra). Thomas Landauer wrote 'The Trouble with Computers' in 1995 - here - but the culture has not changed much since.

Systemic vs. systematic thinking

Many engineers are happy doing systematic thinking in the complicated domain (Cynefin), and are unhappy coping with emergence, thinking systemically, working in the complex domain. Notes on the difference here here here. Acting to meet human values requires systemic thinking and many engineers are never going to be up to that. It seems that engineers that don't 'get' complexity are not amenable to change via a short course (or perhaps even lived experience).


[Found on Twitter]


Wednesday 8 September 2021

Does productivity matter?

 

The Solow Computer Paradox, or IT productivity paradox has been running for a while now. The latest installment of the mysteries of productivity has been published recently here.

Obviously, we cannot expect economists to tell us anything useful, so a short listicle on practical reasons for the paradox may help. The Black Box approach to organisations taken by economists is unable to support human-centred automation vs. human-replacement automation. A Glass Box approach is required for this. Good intentions that lead nowhere useful can be found here and here (both pdf).

Robo-Taylorism

Human activity in physical space is fully exposed to the panopticon of surveillance capitalism and Digital Taylorism here. Chickenized cyborg gig-economy jobs under algorithmic management dominate sectors such as logistics.Within a limited framework, these dehumanized enterprises are being 'optimised' for productivity. One can only hope that the Gradgrinds doing this find themselves locked into a pre-Ocado business model and fail. Attempts at micro-surveillance (bossware, tattleware etc.) in cognitive, social, creative etc. settings backfire, and certainly don't lead to anything resembling real productivity.

Financial engineering

Productivity is a topic of importance to an age of industrial engineering, but of questionable relevance to an age of financial engineering. Anglo-Saxon capitalism has been in the latter for some years. Try and invest based on 'value' or 'company fundamentals'. See here and here.

Productive enterprise as busted myth

The Gervais Principle here shows the organisation as a dysfunctional structure with matters other than optimal productivity on its mind.

Functional stupidity (here pdf) limits individual and collective cognition in an 'information age'. Perhaps the key factor in current productivity shortfalls.

Bullshit Jobs here are all too prevalent, and there seems to be no effort to eradicate them. "The market has a natural tendency to undersupply good jobs." - delicately put by Acemoglu here pdf.

Gammon's Law of Bureaucratic Displacement here is not restricted to a few public sector organisations. " in a bureaucratic system … increase in expenditure will be matched by fall in production …. Such systems will act rather like ‘black holes’ in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in resources, and shrinking in terms of ’emitted’ production.

 Bureaucracy’s most destructive effectsare due to its permeation and impairment of the activities of non-administrative staff.

An example is the progressive transformation of nurses from patient-centred carers to administroids whose requirement to produce detailed patient care plans and participate in workshops and seminars leaves them little time to attend to patients’ basic dietary needs or prevent them developing pressure ulcers.

The second major cause derives from the mechanical nature of bureaucracy. Its proliferation is not simply the product of individual empire building. Although a bureaucratic organisation encourages, and is nourished by, individual self-interest, proliferation is inherent in the system itself.
"

Similarly, Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization
."

Parkinson's Law is worth revisiting here.

Socio-Technical Systems here is a well-established approach to designing effective, productive organisations, but is seen as a specialist interest.

Office layout

Ever since the Action Office was subverted into cubicles, office layout has been determined by unaccountable bureaucrats with no consideration of productivity (with some exceptions of course). Open plan offices and the 'creativity' demanded now are basically incompatible. If enterprises had any real interest in productivity, this situation would have changed long ago.

Central Banking

Cheap debt from central banks is keeping Zombie companies alive. These companies increase 'productivity dispersion'. Their continued existence highlights the lack of interest in productivity.

Labour market

Labour market tightness may be necessary for productivity increases - here. A post-covid possibility.

Inappropriate automation and technology

"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency." Bill Gates

Despite the introduction of cloud documents for group working, office technology has been functionally fossilised for a long time. Simply put: When did everyone stop using Powerpoint? The tools for WFH similarly make no real use of technology for more effective working e.g. do any video conferencing tools use automatic mediation here pdf? How is the budget for facilitator training? How many firms have flipped their offices here? Does management know that email is not work here? Is there any scaleable use of lessons learned from CSCW? Recent automation of the hiring process (and people analytics generally) is awe-inspiringly dreadful.

In short, productivity doesn't seem to matter, apart from Bezos' galley-slaves.

As a footnote, if you know any of those souls who think that the robots will do all the work and we can sit around being creative and radical on UBI; treat them with compassion but do not join them in their delusion. We are all off to the Precariat if we don't get organised.