Long time ago, machines started to be stronger and more precise than people. That is not new but…are they smarter too? We can forget developments near to SciFi like artificial intelligence based in quantum computing or interaction among simple agents. Instead, we are going to deal with present technology, its role in an event like 11S and the conclusions that we can get from that.

 

 Let’s start with a piece of information: A first generation B747 plane required three/four people in a cockpit with more than 900 elements. A last generation B747 only requires two pilots and the number of elements inside the cockpit decreased in two thirds. Of course, this has been posible through I.T. introduction and, as a by-product, rhrough automation of tasks that, previously, had to be performed manually. The new plane appears as easier than the old one. However, the amount of tasks that the plane performs now on its own makes it a much more complex machine.

 

 Planes used in 11S could be considered as state-of-the-art planes at that time and this technological level made the fact possible, of course, together with a number of things far from technology. Something like 11S should have been hard with a less advanced plane. Handling old planes is harder and the collaboration of pilots in a mass-murder should have been required. Not an easy task getting the collaboration of someone in his own death under death threat.

 

The solution was making the pilot expendable and that, if the plane is flying, requires another pilot willing to take his own life. How is the training cost for that pilot? In money terms, a $120.000 figure could be more less adjusted if speak about training a professional pilot. However, this could not be hard to get for the people that organized and financed 11S. A barrier harder to pass is the time required for this training. Old planes were very complicated and their handling required a good amount of training to be acquired along several years. Should terrorists be so patient? Could they trust in the commitment of future self-killers along the years?

 

 Both questions could invite the organizers to reject the plans as unfeasible. However, technology played its role in a very easy way: Under normal situations, modern planes are easier to handle and, hence, they can be flown by people less knowledgeable and less expert. Coming from this point, situation appears under a different light: How long it takes for a rookie pilot getting the dexterity required to handle the plane at the level required by the objectives? Facts showed the answer: A technologically advanced passenger plane is easy to handle –at the level required- by a low-experienced pilot after an adaption through simulator training.

 

Let’s go back to the starting question: Machines are stronger and more precise than people. Are they smarter too? We could start discussing the different definitions about intelligence but, anyway, there is something that machines can do: Once a way to solve a problem is defined, that way can be programmed into a machine to get the problem automatically solved once and again. As a consequence, there is displacement of complexity from people to the machine, allowing modern and complex machines to be handled by people less able than former machines with more complex interfaces.

 

 Of course, there is an economic issue here: An important investment in technological design can be recovered if the number of machines sharing the design is high enough. Investment in design is made only once but it can drive to important savings in thousands of pilots training. At this moment, automation paradox appears: Modern designs produce more complex machines with a good part of the tasks automated. Automation makes these machines easier to handle under normal conditions than the previous ones. Hence, less trained people can operate machines that, internally, are very complex. Once complexity is hidden at interface level, less trained people can drive more complex machines and that is the place where automation payback is.

 

 The scaring question is this one: What happens in unforeseen situations and, hence, not included in technological design? If we speak about high risk activities, the manufacturer uses to have two answers to this questions: Redundancy and manual handling. However, both possibilities require a previous condition: The problem has to be identified as such in a clear and visible way. If not or if, even after being identified, the problem appears in a situation where there is not available time, people trained to operate the machine can find that the machine “becomes crazy” without any clue about the causes of the anomalous behavior.

 

 Furthermore, if the operator receives a full training, that is, not only related with interface but related with the knowledge of the principles of internal design, automation could not be justified due to increased training costs. We already know the alternative: The capacity to answer to an unforeseen event is seriously jeopardized. 11S is one of the most dramatic tests about how people with low training can perform tasks that, before, should have required more training. However, this is not an uncommon situation and it is nearer to our daily life than we could suspect.

 

Everytime we have a problem in the phone, an incidence with the Bank, an administrative problema in the gaz or electricity bill…we can start a process calling the Customer Service. How many times, after bouncing from one Department to other, someone tells us that we have to dial the number that we had dialed at the beginning? Hidden under these experiences, there is a technological development model based in complex machines and simple people. Is this a sustainable model? Technological development produce machines harder and harder to understand by their operators. In that way, we make better and better things that we already knew how to do and things that already were hard become harder and harder.

 

 11S was possible, among other things, as a consequence of a technological evolution model. This model is showing to be exhausted and requiring a course change. Rasmussen stated the requirements of this course change under a single condition: Operator has to be able to run cognitively the program that the machine is performing. This condition is not met and, in case of being mandatory, it could erase the economic viability driving to a double challenge: One of them should be technological making technology understandable to users beyond operating level under known conditions and the other one is organizational avoiding the loss of economic advantages..

 

Summarizing, performing better in things that we already performed well and, to do that, performing worse in things that we already were performing poorly is not a valid option. People require answer always, not only when automation and I.T. allow it. Cost is the main driver of the situation. Organizations do not answer unforeseen external events and, even worse, complexity itself can produce events from inside that, of course, do not have an answer neither.

 

 A technological model aimed to make easier the “what” hiding the “why” is limited by its own complexity and it is constraining in terms of human development. For a strictly economic vision, that is good news: We can work with less, less qualified and cheaper people. For a vision more centered in human and organizational development, results are not so clear. By one side, complexity puts a barrier preventing the technological solution of problems produced by technology. By other side, that complexity and the opacity of I.T. make the operators slaves without the opportunity to be freed by learning.