Advances in Human-AI Collaboration

1Human Interaction with Intelligent AutomationA Continuum of AI Levels from Which Designers and Users Can Choose

Thomas B. Sheridan¹ and William B. Rouse²

¹Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

²McCourt School of Public Policy Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

1.1 Introduction

Intelligent automation will make use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology to provide far greater capability than traditional automation. It will pervade many aspects of our lives—in our factories, our businesses, our homes, and our hospitals. It will allow for new flexibility of interaction with human users, and in many cases, it will make decisions on its own, based on its knowledge of what is safe and what its users want.

To provide contrast, this chapter briefly reviews traditional automation and highlights aspects of human interaction from the human factors literature, including salient taxonomies and human–computer simulation experiments that reveal the limitations of both the automation and the humans. Factors related to task requirements, safety, and time and cost requirements are discussed. The chapter then discusses how advances in AI and robotics are changing automation and providing augmentation and adaptation in information management, intent inferencing, error-tolerant interfaces, adaptive aiding, and intelligent tutoring. We propose a novel scale of levels of AI sophistication that, when combined with the traditional ...