Did you read Hard Times, one of Charles Dickens’ many great novels? I’m sure I did…but that was decades ago. There is a character I remember from this classic 1854 novel: Thomas Gradgrind. What a great name. Dickens was brilliant with names - Wackford Squeers, Uriah Heep, Scrooge. Now, Gradgrind is a square-shaped, bald-headed, hardnosed… Continue reading What is a Horse: How Critical Thinking and Knowing What to Measure is Essential in the Age of AI
Category: Judgment
Engineering Judgment: The More We Automate, the More Work There is for Humans
Automating Judgment Out In an Amazon warehouse in Baltimore, roughly 300 full-time workers were fired between August 2017 and September 2018 for being too slow at picking, packing and moving items. That was close to a tenth of the building’s workforce. Not one firing required a human manager’s approval. Amazon’s system tracked “time off task,”… Continue reading Engineering Judgment: The More We Automate, the More Work There is for Humans