Friday, October 05, 2007

"Automated decision-making: The death of expertise"

Read the full article in The Economist, September 13th 2007.

From the review of Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres:
Mr Ayres predicts that automated decision-making will soon see other professional jobs going the same way as that of the bank-loan officer, once well-paid and responsible and now a mere call-centre operative, paid peanuts to parrot the words a computer prompts. Doctors will have to face up to the fact that computers can diagnose illnesses better than they can, and teachers will find that although their presence is needed to engage their pupils, their professional judgment often is not. When teaching small children to read, for example, tightly scripted lessons, their exact content and timing honed by randomised trials, do best.

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