Ironies of Automation: Still Unresolved After All These Years

Lisanne Bainbridge's 1983 paper, Ironies of Automation, has had considerable influence on human-machine research, prescience in predicting automation-related concerns that have led to incidents and accidents, and relevance to issues that are manifested to this day. Bainbridge's paper displays influences of several researchers, but Rasmussen's work on operator performance in process systems has perhaps been most influential. Unlike those who had earlier considered operator input a unidimensional aspect of system performance to be considered equally with other system elements, Rasmussen viewed operator performance as multidimensional-to be considered, with training and experience, in examining the operator role in system operations. Expanding on his work and applying it to automated systems, Bainbridge described how automation fundamentally altered the role of the human operator in system performance. Requiring the operator to oversee an automated system that could function more accurately and more reliably than he or she could, can affect system performance in the event that operator intervention is needed. The influence of the insights Bainbridge provided on the effects of automation on system performance could be seen in both research on automation and in the recognition of ironies discussed in subsequent automation-related accidents. Its inspiration to researchers, accident investigators, regulators, and managers continues to this day as automation development and its implementation continue unabated.