Auto-Decision Systems Can Lead to Big Failures or Undermine Success

When Tragic Failures Result from Decisions Arrived At With Heavy Reliance on Automated Systems and Strictly Structured Decision-Making Process
(I wrote this as some time-killer and after motivated by an idea, but oh I got lost along the way! LOL

Maybe I intended to write as a title: Unintended Consequences Can Multiply Exponentially When An Inflexible or Convenient Decision-Making Structure Limits the Creative or Problem-Solving Thinking of Decision-Makers Especially Those Leading in Highly Volatile Situations or Environments 

In making decisions with critical implications to high consequence and high impact objectives or goals, what are the limits that should be imposed to minimize unintended consequences? Can the strengths of a routine pattern of decision-making (sets of hard facts and figures as inputs and sets of recommended courses of actions or decisions that fall within the range of safe to low-risk choices), or automated decisions and even automation-assisted decisions – be its critical weakness too in certain decisions?

To the last question my answer is a big yes. As I always emphasize, convenient decisions or pattern of decision-making is what the brain will first resort to sometimes without paying attention to the nuances in the facts and figures (like big data) it is being fed or that it is detecting.

Worse, without giving attention to, sometimes, inputs that are inconsistent with the relevant experiences & exposure of the decision-maker, or inputs that can’t be easily quantified – the decision-maker will remain blind as to what’s really keeping an objective from being successfully accomplished after many tries. Another big challenge is the relative weight that should be assigned to an input, fact or number in a given scenario or situation.

Take for example the experiences of the US in Iraq. All the money, the best military trainings, the material support, the moral support, and all – it all resulted to….a weaker Iraqi Armed Forces than Saddam Hussein’s at its weakest. Corruption, and the lack of institutional mechanisms to minimize it – resulted in some of the best-armed and best-trained soldiers in the world sometimes running away from the very rebel groups they sold their weapons to, rebel soldiers who live lives of hardships perhaps compared to the lives of relative comforts among the government soldiers.

In one country, 1 Special Forces guy I got to chat with remarked to our group: “We couldn’t wait to go home, after many hours on standby we were tired and we knew the situation became much more dangerous and uncertain.” They had their full meals while their heroic hungry peers were being butchered. So he felt lucky that they were not ordered to reinforce their peers who turned out by then were already being massacred nearby. I wondered what his boss would have said were he there and heard it.

In the case of a Google driver-less car, all the most advanced artificial intelligence programs still fail to can or package the unpredictable thinking and behavior of human drivers behind the other cars on the roads and parking lots.

It is a good demonstration of what can go wrong when highly sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making are relied upon for certain decisions that designers of such systems thought are adequate to address even the factors not easily convertible to formulas or represented in any quantifiable means like human emotions, cultures of people or individual tendencies.

One explanation is the computational power of the brain that remains unmatched even by the most powerful of computers who after all rely on inputs rather than a complex and highly-evolved learning and coping mechanisms of the human brain. The experienced human brain makes the best decisions in highly complex and confusing situations without comparable precedents.

Now what do I suggest? My suggestions are not as important as my publicly calling attention to this key vulnerability, weakness on decision-making process on a critical-link component in achieving mission objectives and for leaders, managers, military decisions-makers, disaster rescue and emergency supervisors and workers, even political campaign managers to be always conscious of that you might be unconsciously paying little attention to the more important and relevant data, facts or opinions.

I have one idea. Is the fact an information, a hard or soft fact, an assessment, an idea, an opinion is obtained for free, does that automatically means it is of low value? Is value equated then with the acquisition cost of a critical idea, opinion or fact? If you pay $5,000 to a marine biologist to tell you if in a given time and day in a given season, there is a high likelihood that sharks abound near the beach in some remote undeveloped and uninhabited island – is it automatically more valuable than the opinion of a fisherman, given freely, who have been fishing the waters in the area for 2 decades already, and who thinks he has a good idea of the pattern of shark presence there?

I find this common in our practice of consultancy. We oftentimes find the solutions to intractable problems the top officials, managers or executives ask us to remedy, where, oh among the very suggestions of their own staff. In many instances all that we did was give a voice to the suggestions, concerns or so by the front-liners of departments heads to the top hierarchy of the organization.

It's sometimes not how we articulate it or give credibility to their ideas (they speak from their own areas of expertise) but rather as the usual culprit it's the fact that we get paid for doing whatever it is that we do and suggest to top management or the big boss.

To solve this, should a system be modified in order to accommodate unconventional wisdom from an unconventional source to make use of or maximize the use of un-sanitized or purely objective and data inputs that might turn out to be of critical value to the effectiveness of key decisions?

Should top officials, for example field commanders or group leaders for military organizations, be given as much decision-making powers and flexibility as, say, hospital emergency-room critical care professionals?

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (in the Philippines), its officials and field workers front liners in the efforts in many disaster-response operations, be given more flexibility to make outright decisions when necessary? That's nearly impossible, in many instances the local officials either always prevail or get in the way if their desires for political gains are not major considerations among the front line disaster-response and rehabilitation workers, as per their thinking.

(I wonder I keep on typing my thoughts on this topic when my main concern and cause of annoyance, maybe frustration right now, is the lack of or poor and intermittent internet connection in this place and its been like this in the past few days.)

Am I simply ignorant about the decision-making systems already out there, that already addressed the concerns I am articulating here? But for any such system to be resilient to modifications and revisions because of the thinking of the designers that it is the best and most advanced (and most relevant), however good it is at decision-making (or decision-making assistance) tasks thrown to it so far, it means it is still far from perfect.

Another. If someone overlooked to account something that is of critical value as an input that just might make an operation finally successful, is the tendency (or system or pattern of decision-making or automated system of decision-making) that caused it to keep prevailing over the outlier facts or better appreciation of facts, or inconsistent facts that can prove more valuable than the acknowledged ones?

I am well aware of the fact there are certain decisions arrived at using the simple weighting system of choosing the lesser evil among all the available choices. But I am not referring to this instance. I’m also aware that there are situations that even Game Theory concepts can’t give clear guidance as to the best cources of actions to take based on the likelihood of accomplishing the desired minimum results.

The Republican Guards, and the Taliban, for example were once respected armed forces (and rebel group, respectively), to the eyes of the west. Iraq standing up to big neighbor Iran. The Taliban standing up to Russian forces. The Al Qaeda was once the representation of evil to many victims of its terror attacks and to its declared targets, but now it’s a lesser evil to even sustain if to help fight the Islamic State forces, directed by former leaders of the Republican Guards in Iraq.

Russia now claims only ground forces can finish the job of defeating (or at least disintegrating) it, and the most effective force to do that is the Syrian armed forces, to be backed and reinforce by Russia, who else.

What I’m most worried is the Philippines basking in the glory of having an internationally acclaimed disaster-risk reduction and mitigation systems in the developing world. But I have seen the ugly face of partisan politics and severe corruption in our country manifesting in unexpected ways (sometimes predictable too) to undermine disaster response and rescue operations in some areas, or at least wreak havoc in the efficiency of response to major calamities.

What we have observed motivated me to make an app to help in the long-term preparations to mitigate some of the effects, in our own little ways. With how decisions are made or arrived at, even in high-stakes and critical situations – and among otherwise brilliant politicians and public officials at that – what we have witnessed and observed also motivated us to create another app to address one are of decision-making to help smart officials make dumb decisions only because their staff failed them on inputs of fed them wrong inputs even misled them. Of course we can’t just give away the details of the projects.

With what I wrote here, I feel like it’s all “much ado about nothing.” But Edison said: “There’s no expedient a man will not go to avoid the real labor thinking.” I wrote this because we’re into some very difficult decision-making process right now.

And my logic and mind is failing me on some questions like: Before people or countries engage in some conflict or misunderstanding then contest to build up weapons of mass destruction and threaten to annihilate each other but then when on the brink of war agreed to sit down and talk, why didn’t they do it before the conflicts on what turned out to have workable solutions after all grew into an existential-threat one?

Einstein once asked: “Am I or the others crazy?” I am. We are, Professor. We all are. And this world is crazy

My Final Thoughts on This Topic Tonight:
The brain becomes lazy in decision-making after achieving what in its own developed convenient pattern of thinking is an optimal kind of thinking and decision-making. Leaders and managers should always remind themselves the need to be conscious of this fact. You always make serious challenges to your assumptions. Or you allow it to be stress-tested by others or counter-opinions. You kind of think there's always a better way to approach or begin to solve a problem. (Circular thinking I have here.)

FYI to the readers. I wrote this as some time-killer as we download an important file back-up system component, and the internet is excruciatingly slow, the wi-fi internet connection is on and off. This wi-fi connection is crazy too. LOL.

You know, in the Philippines, you can capture public-service franchises and not invest commensurately in the infrastructure to maximize profits with the most bare of investments. Something of an optimization of returns, the satisfaction of customers the last consideration, as you have practically a captive population as base of customers.

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