🤝 Autonomy

In the context of ASPECT, “autonomy” characterizes a technology’s level of human-machine teaming and describes the adaptive bi-directional team interaction among humans and machines that augments human capabilities for improved outcomes. This attribute builds on prior work by the Society of Automotive Engineers’ six levels of driving automation and expands on ISO definitions to partition technology into distinct and employable categories.

Tip

ISO 22989¹ defines human-machine teaming as “integration of human interaction with machine intelligence capabilities.”

Levels

Manual (HMT 0)

The execution of a simple script does not imply autonomy beyond manual operation. This level is characterized by the execution of a script where the deterministic outcome is fully known and controlled by the human operator.

Machine-assisted (HMT 1)

In this level, the machine provides assistance to the human operator in executing a task. The human remains in full control of the task execution, with the machine offering support or suggestions as needed. This might include an iterative script that augments the input during each iteration based on prior outputs.

Human as primary (HMT 2)

Machine as primary (HMT 3)

Human supervisor (HMT 4)

Machine only (HMT 5)

1. ISO/IEC 22989:2022 Information Technology — Artificial Intelligence Concepts and Terminology ↩