On July 25, 2000, a Concorde plane smashed into the Hotelissimo hotel outside Paris.
All 100 passengers, nine crew, and four people on the ground died in the carnage; and shortly after the decision was made to ground the supersonic jet for good.
But, argued Portsmouth University Professor Ashraf Labib at his inaugural lecture, decis
ion-making software may soon be playing a leading role in helping human beings make these kind of tough choices.
Prof Labib said a model he devised in the aftermath of the crash could be used to tackle problems ranging from organ donation waiting lists to product disasters like the Concorde calamity.
He said: 'The model considered safety, economics, Concorde's image and prestige, and factors of practicality, with safety being given the most weight.'
The professor, who has earned a reputation as a business logician through his work with Rolls-Royce, the Royal Mail and Proctor and Gamble, said a combination of computerised 'fuzzy logic' and human executive decision-making had been shown to slash the number of machine faults when he brought it to bear on the factory floor operations of Rolls-Royce, Intel, Land Rover and other products.
But although he said this could 'revolutionise' enterprise, the final frame of his inaugural lecture's slideshow featured an image of Pompey manager Harry Redknapp and a PC beside the headline: 'Who would you choose?'
'Human beings are not redundant yet,' he observed. 'But we are learning that these kind of computerised decision-making tools can support decision-making in a big way.'
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