Roger Hicks wrote: >What's wrong with automation? It goes away when its maintainer does. It has in some cases not in fact been kept up to date. If it bypasses email, there's no reliable record of the transactions that actually occurred.
I'm all in favour of automation, as a tool for officers to execute their obligations. I have used varying degrees of automation each time that I have held office in Agora. But ultimately we need to have an AI-complete entity (with present technology, a human) responsible for carrying out the official duties. If you prefer, the responsibility is not so much for performing the duties directly, and more for ensuring that automation is in place, kept up to date, and running smoothly. *That* can't be delegated to a hundred lines of Perl. The condition for appropriate use of automation is pretty much that it's appropriate if it can't be noticed. The human+program ensemble has to be responsive to changes in the rules, claims of irregularity, reinterpretations, and exceptions in crisis situations. It has to respond to and in English. That's all we require, and I'll be impressed if you can do it without the human. -zefram
