Toward balanced man-machine systems

✍ Scribed by Larry Press

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1971
• Weight: 619 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7373
• DOI: 10.1016/s0020-7373(71)80021-4

✦ Synopsis

This paper begins with a simple classification scheme for man-machine systems in which the question used for classification is: Which partner is giving instructions and which one is executing them? A brief survey of current systems and development work shows that little is being done with "balanced" systems, that is those where both partners are active, where either may suggest operations or execute them, and where the order of the steps in the problem-solving process is jointly determined.

One strategy for developing a balanced system is to extend a machine-only system to allow for interaction with and participation by a man, who must be enabled to input decisions and to request information to help him make those decisions.

This strategy is useful for problems which can be automated, but where all of the information known to the investigator cannot be represented explicitly or where routines to process it economically cannot be invented. I have used this strategy in extending the "Concept Learning System" of Hunt, Marin & Stone (1966), and the resulting balanced man-machine system has been shown to be useful for the analysis of multivariate data. Examples are given of the potential application of the approach to simulation studies.