Are checklists a hint that the process could and should be automated?

Ideally, I'd say yes, but you might still want manual confirmation.

Many checklists involve things a computer can't detect without a lot of hardware support.

I think checklists are helpful for training purposes, but at the end of the day humans aren't machines and probably aren't going to think in terms of checklists and many people are going to blank out at following complicated steps for too long. Think about the medical industry and how medical errors are the source of so many deaths despite there being checklists (I believe) in the job and in training.

What I think is helpful for automation are basic sanity checks: are the values in the ballpark of reasonable and common?

If you're doing some financial data entry tasks for example, automation could help quickly find big errors: accidentally putting 999 in an entry field where the maximum is commonly around 99. An automated system could call out exceptional values for human review if it's too far from the expected value.

> For example, could most checklists used by pilots be automated?

I don't know enough about piloting to say definitively, but I'd say that I'd rather fly on a plane that also had an experienced human pilot trying to find anything that seems out of the ordinary, say a weird stain on the wing that merits closer investigation that a computer might not even be programmed to think about. Human judgement can't be beat, especially if a situation hasn't been encountered before.

I’m not sure how you’d automate pilot checklists, but yes, in principle checklists represent an opportunity for progressive automation. Have you ever read a preflight checklist? The parts that can be automated already are automated.

Depends how fast you need to interact with it. If people walk up to a bench, check 3 boxes and walk on it takes 3 seconds. If you replace that with unlocking a preferably charged phone, opening an app and navigating menus it is not an improvement. Dirty hands or gloves are also a problem.

Something dedicated to scan paper checklists into a database would be nice but it isn't as easy as a bunch of radio buttons and select inputs.

> Could most checklists used by pilots be automated?

A machine would be a black box, and there is room for error. A human can use reason and proper judgement to avoid error, although they're not immune from error, but I'd rather a human making decisions when flying. Either that, or use a drone which has a remote operator, so if the drone does crash: there's no human casualty.

>For example, could most checklists used by pilots be automated?

Would you bet your life on the fact that no buffer overflow/memory corruption/any type of bug/hack will happen over the next two decades? I wouldn't

"Checklist" don't mean much btw.

Here's one: Task 1: Build a self-replicating AGI [ ] Task 2: Build a self sustaining colony on Pluto [ ]

Is there an NPM lib for that?

It depends.

How automatable are the checklist items?

Is human judgement required?

Why does the checklist exist?

Who created the checklist and why did they create it?