Error Design

Machines often dissociate us from the actual thing we’re controlling or interacting with.

We are not the machine, we control the machine, and in some ways, it controls us. We’re in a symbiotic relationship with such machines.

But unlike the human adaptability (and emotional nature) we have, machines are better thought of as brute force mechanisms, instructions that execute with a kind of relentless confidence and impunity.

They stumble through situations that are “unfamiliar,” that is, situations in which they encounter a state-of-the-world that isn’t anticipated by either the creators of that machine or its emergent programming (as in systems with self-directed reinforcement learning).

Such machines will inevitably encounter errors and exceptions.

Such machines will inevitably encounter errors and exceptions.