Even pragmatic faith in expert systems still implies trust

Evidence

An element of Simmel’s “weak inductive knowledge” is no doubt very often present in the confidence which lay actors sustain in expert systems. There is a pragmatic element in “faith,” based upon the experience that such systems generally work as they are supposed to do. In addition, there are often regulatory agencies over and above professional associations designed to protect the consumers of expert systems—bodies which licence machines, keep a watch over the standards of aircraft manufacturers, and so forth. None of this, however, alters the observation that all disembedding mechanisms imply an attitude of trust. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 77

Categorization

• XREF: Shows why Stevens’s decades of serving Darlington — a kind of empirical ‘weak inductive knowledge’ — can never become the moral verification that would have exposed the Nazi appeasement; trust persists despite evidence. — connects to: Controlling system trust becomes the exclusive work of experts; Trust clues only reduce risk, never eliminate the leap of faith. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 171; Confidence in expert systems can be catastrophically misplaced — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 13 (+6 more)

Related

• Controlling system trust becomes the exclusive work of experts (similarity 0.95)
• Trust in experts is trust in impersonal systems, not in individuals (similarity 0.86)
• Confidence in expert systems can be catastrophically misplaced (similarity 0.83)
• Modern trust takes the form of trust in specialized information processing (similarity 0.83)
• Giddens describes how trust in abstract systems develops as ‘faceless commitments,’ yet notes relations of trust are always ambivalent because confidence is needed amid fundamental ignorance of… (similarity 0.83)
• Trust in abstract systems is tacit routine, not conscious choice. (similarity 0.83)
• Trust is required only amid ignorance, which always grounds scepticism as well. (similarity 0.82)
• System trust rests on expectations that most won’t test the system (similarity 0.82)
• Trust arises not from powerlessness but from lack of full information about others. (similarity 0.82)
• System trust produces a compulsion to trust a system one cannot correct (similarity 0.82)
• System trust stays latent and beyond open discussion (similarity 0.82)
• Lay trust in expert systems founders when experts’ own ignorance surfaces (similarity 0.82)
• Openly negotiated interdependence undermines trust that existing systems breed silently (similarity 0.81)
• Trust substitutes knowledge of system structure for unavailable information about others. (similarity 0.81)
• External trust depends on learning and system cover, not internal structural reasons. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Confidence in expert systems can be catastrophically misplaced #complicates (0.70) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 13
• Lay trust in expert systems founders when experts’ own ignorance surfaces #complicates (0.60) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 316
• Modern trust takes the form of trust in specialized information processing #expands (0.60)
• Protected systems can replace trust with probability calculations #contradicts (0.60)
• System trust produces a compulsion to trust a system one cannot correct #expands (0.50)