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CK
Personal blog · ckrybus.comprogrammingsystems
CK's personal blog at ckrybus.com covers programming and systems. Since 2021, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf]”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Most-linked posts?
- Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf]21 people · 27 mentions · first linked 2021-02-07
What Hacker News says?
I really like the article. I see this challenge coming to every domain soon Preventing Critical Thinking atrophying is a problem I've been obsessed with for the past 6 months. I think it's one of the fundamental challenges of our times. There's a bunch of literature like Bainbridge's "Ironies of Automations" [1] that show what a mistake relying on automation so much can be. It leads to not just skill atrophy but fai…
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “Avoiding skill atrophy in the age of AI”Submitted Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> In other words, applications where some other system (human or otherwise) will catch the mistakes. The problem with that is that when you move a human from a "doing" role to a "monitoring" role, their performance degrades significantly. Lisanne Bainbridge wrote a paper on this in 1982 (!!) called "Ironies of Automation"[1], it's impressive how applicable it is to AI applications today. Overall Bainbridge recommend…
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “Project Vend: Can Claude run a small shop? (And why does that matter?)”Submitted Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhat has really changed is in the knowledge of the average developer: once upon a time, they knew something, there were code monkeys, of course, but there were also many with solid knowledge. Today, most have very limited knowledge, if that, and no longer know how to work at a system, hardware, local level, etc., so development is entering a phase described long ago by Lisanne Bainbridge: https://ckrybus.com/static/…
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “A shift in developer culture is impacting innovation and creativity”Submitted Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionBainbridge [1] is interesting, but dated. A more useful version of that discussion from slightly later is "Children of the Magenta", [2] an airline chief pilot talking to his pilots about cockpit automation and how to use it. Requires a basic notion of aviation jargon. There's been progress since then. Although the details are not widely publicized, enough pilots of the F-22, F-35, or the Gripen have talked about wh…
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “AI and the ironies of automation – Part 2”Submitted Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI really like this author's summary of the 1983 Bainbridge paper about industrial automation. I have often wondered how to apply those insights to AI agents, but I was never able to summarize it as well as OP. Bainbridge by itself is a tough paper to read because it's so dense. It's just four pages long and worth following along: https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica... For example, see this s…
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “AI and the ironies of automation – Part 2”Submitted Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSee also _The Ironies of Automation_ by Lisanne Bainbridge [1] [1]: https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames”Submitted Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFor some more reading material on this subject, see Ironies of Automation[1]. [1] https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “Field experimental evidence of AI on knowledge worker productivity and quality”Submitted Ironies of Automation [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionHonestly? Well, we entering an era (beside possible global war, famine, ... etc) where knowledge application will be more and more automated, while knowledge creation will be human. Meaning we need less strong arms and more strong brains. Not something that new anyway, the "information age" already makes clear intelligent people could do pretty anything they want to do, while less intelligent are constrained in what…
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “Welcome to the Era of Experience [pdf]”Reminds me somewhat of this old paper on the ironies of automation in factories: https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica... Automation makes people dumber.
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on “What do you really get from IDE-driven development?”Maybe lazy is the wrong term, but less attentive apparently. There was the Ironies of Automation paper about this: https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...
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on “Coding on Copilot: Data suggests downward pressure on code quality”As someone who's is directly involved in developing and deploying automation software in complex organisations here are a few thoughts: - I can resonate with the author that automation can easily create new tasks (work) that didn't exist before. - These tasks generally speaking are of a more cognitive nature to the ones they replace. - If deployed right automation takes out the robot from the human to allow the huma…
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “The Full Automation Fallacy”Few notes: - from the first part of the article I feel a sort of hidden critic of automation and it's outcomes, well, while people should ALWAYS remember the Ironies of Automation by Lisanne Bainbridge [1] it's obvious that as much as we automate as less humans we need to do something and similarly that we loss diversity/leveling anything toward some "standard solutions". This is to be corrected with openness and ex…
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “Tech companies can't find good employees, and it's their own fault”ML is not a net positive for the society, but not because some actor steal the labor of some other human. - it's not net positive because they are proprietary systems trainable only at giant scale so OR humans still have open universities and public research centers who train models on open datasets or it's the definitive proprietary software even in FLOSS form because the model is trained behind the closed door of…
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “AI is not a Net Positive for Society”Those interested in this topic highly recommend reading "Ironies of automation" by Lisanne Bainbridge, its from 1983 but very relevant and provides a more thoughtful and nuanced discussion on the interplay of automation and work. https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...
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on “Machines might not take your job. But they could make it worse”It would be a mistake to suppose that more automation would have resulted in a different outcome. For example, an update to a critical system can also result in operator/interface breakdowns, leading to failures. In fact, according to some accounts, this is exactly what happened and it exacerbated things (some spreadsheet software was updated). I recommend this paper to everyone: https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Ba…
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on “SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers”We are all going to discover the Ironies of Automation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironies_of_Automation https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...
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on “I Think I Have LLM Burnout”There are relatively few things I've read that I can definitively point to as having almost instantly changed my mind on something. This is one of them. Reading often offers a broader understanding or different perspective, but seldom a sudden flash on insight. Others short reads that have changed my mind in that way include: - "The Inner Ring" by CS Lewis ( https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/ ) - "On Photograph…
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on “The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)”Originally published here: https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...
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on “Ironies of Automation (1983)”Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] - https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...
Comment linking /static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
on “SRE Skill Decay Index”There’s a great 1983 paper on “the ironies of automation” with interesting thoughts on this. For example, if nobody knows the 80%, how do they gain experience to do the hard 20%? Or, if operators become essentially low skilled, low status babysitters, the smart people required to cover the challenging 20% might just leave for higher status roles. It’s been posted here before, worth a read if you haven’t come across…
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on “The 30% Rule in AI”
