Are the Critical Thinking Chairs Empty?

I hear lots of conversations about using AI to improve incident investigations. What I don’t hear is much critical thinking about AI in Safety. I usually hear two perspectives on AI and investigation improvement, the Salesperson and the Ostrich . The Salesperson believes a sprinkle of AI magic will improve investigations and the Ostrich is hoping if they keep their head down AI will soon go away. Neither perspective is going to help people in safety and risk work out how to respond to the opportunities and challenges of AI.

My perspective on AI in Safety investigations is one of scepticism. AI uses so far seem focused on getting faster at producing the same. That is, faster at producing reports and lists of actions which do not help people tackle risk and safety. AI may result in you learning the same things over and over again just faster (see "The AI Mirror How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking" by Shannon Vallor and https://lnkd.in/gDbeZ7yr). AI can help process large amounts of data and if that data is good quality this may be a good thing to do. But in Safety much of the data that gets collected is not useful. AI may just be a way of turbo charging the bad habits your investigation program already has.

So if you want to use AI (or any other technology) to get better at investigating incidents here’s some questions you could ask about your current investigation program;
- How do we show care for people when we investigate?
- Why do we investigate incidents?
- How do emotions, feelings and relationships help us investigate?
- How do we ensure our approach to investigations is ethical?
- What don’t we investigate and why not?
- Why do we want to get better at this?
- What will improvement look, feel and sound like?
- How does our culture need to change for us to get better at investigations?
- What stories do we tell after investigations are complete?
- What language do we use in relation to risk, safety and investigations?
- What can technology bring to this problem?
- How could technology make this problem worse?

Neither the Salesperson or the Ostrich want to ask these questions, let alone answer them. If you want to use AI to improve investigations do some critical thinking first to ensure you understand the culture, worldviews and practices associated with your investigations. Second work out what better could look like and what that means for the people in your organisation. And finally ask if AI or any other technology is needed.