We keep relearning a lesson spelt out in 1983.
Automating repetitive work turns the expert into a monitor. Monitoring is a different job and people are bad at it.
Aviation learned this (and redesigned how pilots and autopilots work together).
Self-driving relearned it (after promising 1M robotaxis by 2020).
Radiology relearned it (after insisting that we stop training radiologists in 2016).
Now every enterprise is relearning it.
Karpathy said it himself this week: “human review and comprehension are starting to fall behind.”
It has been for a while. Give people tasks that are repetitive or demanding, and they turn into rubber stamps. Not because they’re lazy or incompetent. Because that’s how human attention works.
We’ve had forty years to learn how to design for the person watching the machine. Most AI features still ship with an Approve button and a disclaimer.
What share of your AI’s output is approved without changes? That’s your rubber-stamp rate.