How many times have you logged into an account on your phone or desktop only to have your password automatically populate? Or how many times have you had a surprise delivery appear at your door because you forgot about one of your subscriptions? One of the more shocking (to me) automated developments within the past decade or so are app-driven, self-starting cars. With a press of a button on an app, you can start your car and even the operations of the car such as air conditioning or heating without even as much as physically entering the car. And don’t even get me started on AI programs – wow.
With all these developments meant to make life easier, it might be difficult to imagine how this level of automation could ever be a bad thing – it’s progress, right?
Though automation is definitely a huge convenience, I’d like to propose that there may be a downside to having nearly every facet of our life on “speed dial.” In this day and age, much of life is automated, and these developments in technology are impressive. However, I suggest too much automation might have unwanted effects on us as individuals and, more largely, as a society.
A couple of years ago, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggested that “while automation technology has changed some jobs, it has eliminated others entirely” (GAO, 2022). Although this quote is in reference to self-checkout kiosks at grocery stores and other automated, formerly human-based tasks like filing taxes and record keeping, concerned discussions of automation is not new.
Society has certainly advanced exponentially with digital automation exploding in recent decades. However, conversations date back to “the early 1800s when economists started to explore the issue during the Industrial Revolution” (Wartzman, 2017) as early assembly lines were introduced and perfected in factories.
Automation has certainly made life increasingly easier and more convenient since its inception, but it also has the potential, I caution, to erase the humanness of many everyday exchanges and interactions. Automation doesn’t only decrease the need for human workers, but it also may decrease our ability to think critically and solve problems without the aid of automation.
With the increasing use and further advancement of automation, “there is a risk that individuals will neglect developing and upholding their own cognitive skills… For my generation it was calculators and computers, for the Gen Z and Alpha it’s GPT, Gemini, and Copilot” (Petersen-Jessen, 2024). What might once have been depending on a calculator for basic math functions could easily become losing the ability to hold a real-life conversation without the use of AI. I don’t think that’s a step too far.
Life requires interaction, collaboration, and human creativity. Without these elements, we risk losing what makes us individuals – what makes us human. Although automation certainly has its place and allows us to live a significantly more comfortable lifestyle, it’s critical that we acknowledge that too much help could work to our disadvantage.
What would we learn and how would we develop as individuals if all of our decisions and actions were dictated and accomplished by an algorithm? The luxuries of Amazon’s “Alexa,” Apple’s “Siri,” and Samsung’s “Bixby” may make life’s everyday decision-making easier, but let’s not forget to use your own built-in automaton – your brain.