Overheard people talking about the “Hammond problem” at a friend’s birthday party, where a bunch of academics and IT professionals gathered for a BBQ picnic. The terms “washing machine” and “AI” were also mentioned.
Intrigued, I did a search and found the following two articles.
In her article, Vanessa Andreotti from the University of Victoria in Canada recalls how her two grandmothers reacted to washing machines. One grandmother “adamantly refused to use a washing machine” and “believed that such machines diminished women’s value, as she saw women’s worth rooted in the quality of domestic service they could provide”. In sharp contrast, the other grandmother “held a profound fascination with washing machines, but not for their utility in cleaning clothes. Instead, she was interested in the sounds, smells and motions”.
Andreotti then argues: “[Grandmother]Victoria’s opposition to the washing machine and her conviction that it devalued women’s inherent worth reflects a larger pattern of internalized oppression, where individuals may choose to uphold established power dynamics, even if it comes at their own expense. In academia today, a similar resistance can be observed in some objections to generative artificial intelligence, particularly LLM (large language models, like ChatGPT).”
Meanwhile, in his article “What John Hammond Got Wrong About Automation” via Medium, Garren DiPasquale suggests: “Michael Crichton’s book [Jurassic Park] is more relevant today than it ever was. If you’ve never read it, you should.” (I totally agree.) He goes on: “The story isn’t really about dinosaurs getting loose — it’s about what happens when scientific capability outpaces wisdom, when corporate ambition overrides caution, when we build systems we don’t fully understand and then trust them completely.”
I really like this bit: “The way we’re currently building automated AI systems is creating the exact conditions that led to Jurassic Park’s collapse. Overconfidence in control, lack of transparency, insufficient testing, and poor incentive structures that lead to human error.” In short, the article is about “what happens when you try to build fully autonomous AI coding agents — and discover that the real threat isn’t automation, it’s preserving human creativity and autonomy in an AI-powered world”.
Image thanks to: #1 University Affairs, Canada. #2 Richard Attenborough as John Hammond in Jurassic Park (1993).
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 