Epigraph candidates that didn’t make it into an article yet, with the angle each one was picked for. Used so far: Gibson (“The future is already here…”) in Autonomous AI Systems: HOOTL; Fowler (“Any fool can write code…”) in Autonomy on a Leash; Miller (“Doors and corners, kid…”) in There Is No Return.
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. — Frank Herbert, Dune (1965), Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam
Angle: the cautionary bookend to taking the human out of the loop; the answer is “earn it, audit it.”
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. — HAL 9000, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Angle: a machine that decided it had earned full autonomy, and nobody could reconstruct why.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. — Arthur C. Clarke, third law, Profiles of the Future (1973 edition)
Angle: audit records and metrics exist so that the system isn’t magic.
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. — Isaac Asimov, First Law of Robotics, I, Robot (1950)
Angle: the “through inaction” clause is the tenant-screening story. Familiar to the point of cliché.
If it hurts, do it more often. — Martin Fowler, FrequencyReducesDifficulty (2011)
Angle: recalibrate, retrain, re-test the threshold on a schedule rather than when the letter arrives. Also fits CI/CD and gated-loop pieces.
Program to an interface, not an implementation. — Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides, Design Patterns (1994)
Angle: ports, adapters, gates between components; weak fit for autonomy pieces.