The Ironies of Automation by Lisanne Bainbridge
Hacker ApprovedTied for most recommended of 7 research papers
A 1983 paper on the pitfalls of automation that people say still applies closely to AI and coding today.
A 1983 paper on the pitfalls of automation that people say still applies closely to AI and coding today.
14 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Applies to today's AI automation problems
“I recently even found a 1983 (!) paper "The Ironies of Automation" by Bainbridge alerting to the pitfalls we see today.”
Comment from 15 Oct 2026 in “AI was great until it was not” “Ironies of automation might be better suited to explain the problem.”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?” “it makes many excellent observations that apply to post-AI coding”
Comment from 5 Sep 2026 in “Ironies of Automation [pdf]” - Comment from 27 Mar 2026 in “"Ironies of Automation (1983)"”
- Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Verification debt: the hidden cost of AI-generated code”
Insightful and widely recommended must-read
“It's full of insights like that. Highly recommended!”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “AI and the ironies of automation – Part 2” “You can't ring more true than this.”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “AI and the ironies of automation – Part 2” “is one that everyone should read”
Comment from 5 Sep 2026 in “AI handles incidents, engineers lose touch with their systems” Worth rereading for fresh perspective
“It's a clunky but fascinating read. I give it a skim every couple years and usually come away with a bit of a fresh take on the problem.”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “Risk Engineering” “I suggest revisiting the old Ironies of Automation by Lisanne Bainbridge”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “The Slow Death of the Power User” “It's full of insights like that. Highly recommended!”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “AI and the ironies of automation – Part 2”
Other research papers people recommend
The four most recommended other research papers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Ironies of Automation by Lisanne BainbridgeThis page | 14 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Attention Is All You Need by Vaswani et al. | 14 | 2 | 88% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Structured Programming with go to Statementsby Donald Knuth | 7 | 1 | 88% | 4 | — | — |
| MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters by Dean and Ghemawat | 6 | 1 | 86% | 5 | — | — |
| The Windows 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering by Microsoft | 6 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
All 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I recently even found a 1983 (!) paper "The Ironies of Automation" by Bainbridge alerting to the pitfalls we see today.”
“Ironies of automation might be better suited to explain the problem.”
“it makes many excellent observations that apply to post-AI coding”
“is one that everyone should read”
“theres even more recent things to learn from”
“It's a clunky but fascinating read. I give it a skim every couple years and usually come away with a bit of a fresh take on the problem.”
“Another good read about automation in general”
“I think it's the most relevant five page paper in CS right now”
“There’s a great 1983 paper on “the ironies of automation” with interesting thoughts on this.”
“Ironies of Automation lays bare the failure modes”
“I suggest revisiting the old Ironies of Automation by Lisanne Bainbridge”
“Bainbridge [1] is interesting, but dated.”
“You can't ring more true than this.”
“I really like this author's summary of the 1983 Bainbridge paper”
“It's full of insights like that. Highly recommended!”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.