The wheels of a car turn round and around. The thermostat senses the temperature and adjusts itself as necessary. The printer spews out the paper you just typed on your computer. All of these are automated versions of time-consuming tasks.
Before the wheels turned around at the press of a pedal, people pedaled the wheels themselves, like cycling. Imagine pedalling 300 kilometers. Not only will it take a long time, but you will be dead tired.
Before the thermostats, we needed fans for the summer and a heater for the winter. Although it doesn’t take long, it still wastes lots of valuable time.
Finally, before printers, there were pens and paper. It is this duo that transforms our ideas and emotions into something tangible. To completely print a book in those days took days and months because you had to write each and every letter. This now can be printed in just a few hours.
What is automation?
This is automation. It is when you remove so much friction from a system’s process that human intervention is not needed. As an example, consider the machines used in factories. They are the simplest examples of automation. That is how factories transitioned from hiring employees to make the products to buying machines to manufacture 10x as many products as employees make every minute.
The paradox.
Here’s the paradox though. The more efficient the automated machine is, the more important human intervention is. Think of it like this:
Imagine a factory that produces processor chips for computers. It creates 40 chips per minute and runs for 12 hours. Suddenly, one day there was a slight miscalculation when editing the code of the machine software. Because of this small mistake 40 chips are ruined every minute. That is to say, every day 28,800 chips are ruined. Now let’s say that one processor costs $20 in raw materials and can be sold for $200. That means the factory loses $576,000 in costs and $5,760,000 in opportunity costs. Which means human intervention is very a must. The reason is not to ensure that the process goes smoothly, but to ensure it does not go wrong.
The irony.
But here’s the irony. Human intervention is a must, but they can just have employees staring at a machine for 12 hours a day! That would dull their senses and small mistakes would become the new normal.
Here’s what you have to do to solve the paradox and eliminate the irony. There must be regular & rigorous sampling and testing of automated processes.