When we talk about automation, we often imagine a future in which everything we do will be almost entirely handled by machines. Cars will drive themselves. Management decisions will be handed over to an AI. Even the creative arts might one day be taken over by robots.
But for the time being, automation isn’t quite there. And so, some compromise between machine and human worker is needed. A synergy between the two has already yielded great results – just think about an autopilot guiding a plane for the majority of a flight, and human pilot intervening only for take-off and landing.
A more commonplace example of machine-assistance comes in the form of a spell-checker on a word-processing program. And these are getting more sophisticated. Apps like Grammarly and ProWritingAid not only identify grammatical or spelling errors; they now also identify more stylistic problems, and help us to make writing clearer and more concise, even when it isn’t technically wrong. [Read more…] about When Automation Works Alongside Humans
