Reflections On The 1951 Fitts List: Do Humans Believe Now That Machines Surpass Them?

Keywords

clickers; CrowdFlower; crowdsourcing; electronic voting system; Function allocation

Abstract

In 1951, Paul Fitts “surveyed the kinds of things men can do better than present-day machines, and vice versa” and introduced a list of statements, now commonly known as the Fitts list. A criticism sometimes raised with respect to the Fitts list is that it is outdated. Hence, it is important to address the issue of modernity, especially in light of the increasing rate of technological advance. A total of 249 engineering MSc students were asked to indicate whether humans surpass machines or whether machines surpass humans, for each of the 11 statements of the Fitts list, using an electronic voting system. 2,948 respondents from 103 countries did the same via a crowdsourcing facility. The results indicated that present-day machines are considered to surpass humans in respect to detection, perception, and long-term memory while Fitts argued that the opposite held true. However, a closer reading of the 1951 report reveals that some of the supposed disagreements were already anticipated at that time.

Publication Date

1-1-2015

Publication Title

Procedia Manufacturing

Volume

3

Number of Pages

5334-5341

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.promfg.2015.07.641

Socpus ID

85010000280 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85010000280

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