‘Dumbing Down’ : Computers Now Do Tasks Formerly Handled by People

Crack addicts who used to spill their life stories to Jesus Frias in a basement office of a Brooklyn hospital are now telling them to a computer instead.

The traditional intake interview, through which the drug counselor gained insight into a new patient, has been replaced by a multiple-choice questionnaire that the patient fills out alone.

A computer program converts the patient’s answers to the 132 questions into a “narrative,” a formulaic two-page biography.

Frias, 34, said he understands why computers have taken over the initial interviews--for one thing, they give counselors more time for other meetings with patients--but he said something is lost without that first face-to-face contact.

“When you ask the question, is your father or mother alive, and they say yes, even that yes tells you a lot. You can say, ‘You don’t sound too happy your father’s alive.’ ”

The automation of some phases of addiction counseling is part of a streamlining and simplification of jobs everywhere, made possible by technology and sophisticated management techniques. Critics call it “dumbing down.”

Getting Lassoed

Wisecracking short-order cooks are disappearing from the American scene, replaced by drones who answer to french fry computers. Electronic monitoring is squeezing out the folksy airline reservation clerks who tell callers that Vancouver is nice this time of year.

Even stockbrokers, those cowboys of finance, are getting lassoed. Some big firms now decide centrally how and where clients should invest their money, reducing brokers to happy-talking functionaries.

Office automation is “rising almost floor by floor to engulf higher and higher strata of white-collar workers,” Barbara Garson wrote in a 1988 book, “The Electronic Sweatshop.”

Turning human work over to computers is not an inescapable part of the emerging knowledge economy. Many companies are moving in the other direction, trying to gain a competitive edge by encouraging employees to think independently.

But there are powerful social forces behind human automation, including a shortage of skilled workers and management’s innate desire for greater control.

Counselors and administrators at the Poly Drug Clinic of Kings County Addictive Hospital say the computerization of intake interviews has brought greater efficiency and uniformity.

The questionnaire developed by Auto Assess Inc. asks, for example, how much patients spend daily for drugs and what they do in their spare time.

Another company’s Psychological Screening Inventory requires patients to answer true or false to statements such as “I enjoy classical music,” “Strange voices have spoken to me,” and “Shooting is a good sport.”

‘Finite Instrument’

Computers translate the answers into neat statements containing sentences such as, “Client feels she is a normal drinker.” Counselors are supposed to plug holes with a personal interview.

When interviews were done in person, the write-ups tended to be messy and incomplete, especially when done by the less-educated counselors hired at a time when it was in vogue to use former addicts in rehabilitation. They also took two hours or more to do right.

“It’s a finite instrument like all, but the purpose is to save us time for the counselor,” said the clinic director, Jerry Halloran.

“The downside of it would be a counselor getting this back and filing it away and never looking at it,” he said.

Crack, the highly addictive, smokable form of cocaine, is ravaging poor neighborhoods of Brooklyn. The success rate for treatment is low, especially in an outpatient clinic like the Poly Drug Clinic. Knowing a patient well can help a counselor head off predictable trouble, Frias said.

The computerized reports are sometimes adequate, sometimes not, Frias said. He fears that they could be a temptation to laziness.