Automation and the Quality Professional

Today’s tools are incredible, but the human soul beats the machine every time

Nurturing quality and sustainable excellence requires perspective, flexibility, and humanity.

For as long as humans have been humans (and for perhaps a million years before then, give or take), we’ve been tool users and toolmakers. Short of the occasional Ned Ludd supporter, most of us enthusiastically adopt new technologies to make our lives easier, more productive, or just more fun.

Today, many physical and mental tasks can be accomplished by automated tools—and not only the rote and repetitive tasks. Increasingly, true artificial intelligence is edging toward reality, with machines that can work in tight physical space around humans, interpret and adjust to real-time data, write news stories, and act as our very own, pleasant, voice-activated assistants (thanks, Alexa).

Given all this, it’s no surprise that more and more sophisticated tasks are being handled by interconnected machines that can even be programmed to learn, in a sense, from one another. So the question has been asked: Will there come a day at some point in the not-too-distant future in which “work” won’t be something that humans even do anymore?

Opportunities in addition to risks

I’ll get to my answer for that in a moment.

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Comments

Tools and soul

Great post.

My company provides real-time SPC solutions, and I'd add them to your list. These systems are doing a lot to automate and make data more visible and actionable. We're seeing new levels of value as people get beyond the drudgery of recording data, and are really able to step back and see the whole picture. And we're seeing early signs of algorithmic decision-making. It's rudimentary now, but that's where the world is going.

But even though I'm a data head, one of my favorite quotes comes from one of my customers who said, "At the end of the day, the data and the charts mean nothing. It's the conversations about the data and the charts that matter."

So yes, "never lose sight of the fact that the human mind, blended with the human soul, is the best tool ever devised to improve any enterprise or endeavor."

I'd also note that my customer's comments hinted that it isn't an individual effort - it's collaborative. It's about conversations.

Thanks!

I appreciate your words, EJ. All of us at Quality Digest agree with you wholeheartedly that sparking conversations is the reason we all do what we do. The surest path to improvement is to get smart people engaged with each other in figuring out the answers to our thorniest questions. That's the "killer app," the "secret sauce" from which all else develops. Thank you again.

AI

Theoretically an infinite number of monkeys with word processors will after some period of time, likely long enough to be indistiguishable from eternity, produce all of Shakespeare's works, but only the imagination of one human mind could produce them within the brief span of that mind.

AI may efficiently takeover many functions, but it will never write a "Hamlet", paint a Mona Lisa or script a "Blazing Saddles". Likewise, tomorrows great inventions and feats of engineering will be the works of a human who dared to dream.

Agreed

You are undoubtedly right about the capacity of the human creative mind, Al. We can sit around the campfire, eat some beans, and discuss it further at CMSC this Summer...