On the necessity of “Backup people”, if so we could call them this way, and what do I mean by that?
Take for instance, Andrea Riseborough which plays Cruise’s Communication Officer in Oblivion (2013), or Zip from Tomb Raider Legend and Underworld. Jarvis in MCU with Ironman, or TARS from Interstellar are some of the few other examples I can think as of now…
And I bring this up because I feel it often goes overlooked, such roles as these. I mean, input of information at certain times is crucial for the tasks that one must perform, especially if you are out in the wild, in some alien set, or probably facing threats where you have little to no time to ponder about responses and with limited resources.
It also shows an interesting dynamic, one where one is “safe” and guided to provide safeguard for the other counterpart which is risking itself “out there”, and beyond that, a high level of trust and synergy. Now, why do I bring this up? Because I feel, for the most part, that the world is getting harsher with us all having to play both roles most of the time.
In such cases, the Communication Officers depicted do the heavy-lifting analysis with targeted inputs and then outputs the qualified answer for the scenario in question, usually a solution or even a guidance. In the IT field it seems that we have much to rely on our brains to do both tasks at once, and sometimes it just wears me out so freaking much.
Of course, one could then say: “But we have AI now!” and that very much is true, but how certain can we be about the information it provides us, without ourselves having our own great-dose of information to mitigate possible hallucinations? I am not saying it is useless, but that we cannot just follow it “blindly”, as we could one Communications Officer with a high level of expertise for a certain task.
But, in any case, it just left me wondering, which could be the today’s equivalent for such roles that people might find themselves into, and even seeing that such a role seems way more common than I first thought got me thinking…