Session 1: AI - Humans in the System
Chair: Chris Macallister

Human Expertise and his Role in Complex Systems
Brigitte Hoeltzener and Cédric Archaux
Assistant Professor, ENSIETA, Lab. E3I2, Brest, France

This paper proposes to revisit human role in systems in introducing complexity definitions. We shall see that human components are not only source of faults for system but could be a very important source of expert information and decision when technical components are limited in controlling complex system under very unpredictable environment or to extract expert knowledge for autonomous decision making. Thus such technical components too critical to be used alone in complex systems are seen in this paper more as an help to assist human decision who becomes an actor at different levels of the life cycle of complex systems.

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Effects of the Semantic Differences in a Virtual Environment on the Users Reasoning
Albrecht Fritzsche
DaimlerChrysler Information Technology Management, Geschäftsfeld PKW, Sindelfingen, Germany

On the example of a newly introduced system for optimisation and simulation at the Mercedes-Benz production plants, some studies on the effects of the new environment on the users were undertaken. The system is based on advanced technologies like simulated annealing and genetic algorithms. It establishes its own virtual scenario and semantic representation of the factory and the production processes. Since the user does most of his work within the new system, it was expected that an reasoning and attitudes of the users adapted to the system. However, only minor changes could be detected. Users remained within their former reasoning concepts and attitudes, although this meant a huge translation effort when putting information in and getting information out of the system. The results of this studies lead to the conclusion that putting a user into a virtual environment with a different semantic structures is not sufficient for making the user change its own semantics. The analysis of the minor changes that occurred indicated that all of them could be understood as new impressions which could as well be linked with both the previously established semantic representations of the user and the ones suggested by the new virtual environment. Further thoughts of the paper concentrate on group behaviour and the influences of the social context of the user, leading to the theory that the benefit of reduced effort on the cognitive level is not sufficient if no incentive is given on a social level as well. Based on these thoughts, the paper gives a broad outlook on practical applications of AI-related tools in conventional industries.

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3.30pm
Coffee