NYT article “Review: ‘The Digital Doctor’ by Robert Wachter Weighs Medicine’s Technological Transformation” reminds us that we are facing a different kind of risk when instructions are computer generated. The risk we were facing or dealing in the past decade has evolved. Now, the real risk is human obedient to machine output! This example show machine to human interfaces are obstacles for human-to-human collaborations.
Imagine if the number of pills were hand-written, will the nurse enquired about the abnormal large amount? Computer screen and print-outs seems embedded with some magical power. Maybe people are not confident to challenge a computer. They are trained to trust it!
More people are blindly or mindlessly follow printed instructions. Sometimes they do have the confidence to challenge the computer’s decision or sometimes they do not know who or where to voice their concerns. The wide adoption of AI and computer-aided decision is new and we should encourage users to question or re-confirm.
extract: