ABSTRACT
There can be little doubt that replacing human functions with machine functions is necessary, useful and beneficial. Replacing a human function while asking a human to watch a machine performing that function is also going to be necessary, useful, but not as clearly beneficial to all. At present, the role of machine watcher is ill defined. The modern commercial airline cockpit is the workplace in which the monitoring of automated systems is being refined and the guidelines for a large array of monitoring roles are being brought into focus. At present, it is unknown if the human will become a token, bypassed, helpless and sometimes hapless. It is possible that humans will give up their involvement with control systems and accept the consequences of the small error rates that are part of fully automated systems.
