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Re:Principles of Calm Technology by rainhacker on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @10:01AM (#12390191)
> Machines shouldn't act like humans

I'm surprised - does that mean ML/AI isn't calm ? Why ?

Re:Principles of Calm Technology by rajadigopula on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @10:18AM (#12390367)
Maybe to emphasize that machines are there to make the human task easy but not let them get lazy and develop a hard dependency on the machine! As in - I can't do this without using some X machine, is a clear sign that we developed a hard dependency on the machine and we fail to learn/understand how to do the task without using the machine.

Happening a lot, the boundary is fading slowly. The human dependency on machines is constantly increasing, intelligent/ AI machines take this to next level e.g. Self-driving cars.

Re:Principles of Calm Technology by Kadin on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @11:45AM (#12391165)
It's been a very long time since humans haven't been dependent on machines. There's a legitimate question to how complex the supply chains are that produce those machines, and whether as a result it makes society and civilization more fragile (if I'm dependent on farm implements from a blacksmith in the center of town, that's different from being dependent on LED displays only made in 3 factories in the world, all of which are on the other side of the planet). But I think the general idea of "don't become dependent on machines" is a ship that sailed long before any of us were even born.
Re:Principles of Calm Technology by PeterisP on Thursday September 01, 2016 @03:03AM (#12403532)
It highlights the issue that when a machine does a task, usually the best way to do it will be not like a human would do it. Even if we had cheap full-general-AI humanoid robots to do the tasks, it may be better to do the necessary interactions as with a machine, not as with a fellow human - even in a pure business transaction much of our communication is determined by social factors, the fundamental person-to-person relationships.

For example, if I go to a dealer to buy a car, if that process would be replaced with technology, then it would be wrong to make that technology to parrot the interactions I'd usually have with a human salesman. If technology is used to take orders in a restaurant and serve food, then imitating a waiter or waitress might be a marketing novelty, but it's not the appropriate way to do it. It's a different medium now, machines shouldn't act like humans.

Re:Principles of Calm Technology by bduerst on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @12:38PM (#12391626)
In context, they mean that machines should only amplify the best human traits, and vice versa. For example, a social network should amplify human liking/loving and not human disliking/hating.