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HandWiki. Polanyi’s Paradox. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/32479 (accessed on 21 September 2026).
HandWiki. Polanyi’s Paradox. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/32479. Accessed September 21, 2026.
HandWiki. "Polanyi’s Paradox" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/32479 (accessed September 21, 2026).
HandWiki. (2022, November 02). Polanyi’s Paradox. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/32479
HandWiki. "Polanyi’s Paradox." Encyclopedia. Web. 02 November, 2022.
Polanyi’s Paradox
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Polanyi's paradox, named in honour of the British-Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi, is the theory that human knowledge of how the world functions and capability are, to a large extent, beyond our explicit understanding. The theory was articulated by Michael Polanyi in his book The Tacit Dimension in 1966, but it was economist David Autor that named it as Polanyi's paradox in his 2014 research paper on “Polanyi's Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth”. Summarised in the slogan "We can know more than we can tell", Polanyi's paradox is mainly to explain the cognitive phenomenon that there exist many tasks which we, human beings, understand intuitively how to perform but cannot verbalize the rules or procedures behind it. This "self-ignorance" is common to many human activities, from driving a car in traffic to face recognition. As Polanyi argues, humans are relying on their tacit knowledge, which is difficult to adequately express by verbal means, when engaging these tasks. Polanyi's paradox has been widely considered a major obstacle in the fields of AI and automation, since the absence of consciously accessible knowledge creates tremendous difficulty in programming.

self-ignorance ai automation

References

  1. Polanyi, Michael (May 2009). The Tacit Dimension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 1–26. ISBN 9780226672984. OCLC 262429494.  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/262429494
  2. Reber, Arthur (September 1989). "Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 118 (3): 219–235. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.118.3.219. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232481584. 
  3. Asanarong, Thanathorn; Jeon, Sowon; Ren, Yuanlin; Yeo, Christopher (18 December 2018). "Creating a Knowledge Management Culture for Ganga River". Ganga Rejuvenation : Governance Challenges and Policy Options. Wu Xun, Robert James Wasson, Ora-Orn Poocharoen. New Jersey: World Scientific. pp. 349. ISBN 9789814704588. OCLC 1013819475.  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1013819475
  4. Chugh, Ritesh (2015), "Do Australian Universities Encourage Tacit Knowledge Transfer", Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (Lisbon, PT): 128–135, https://www.academia.edu/19661139 
  5. Ryle, Gilbert (1945). "Knowing How and Knowing That: The Presidential Address". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 46: 1–16. doi:10.1093/aristotelian/46.1.1.  https://dx.doi.org/10.1093%2Faristotelian%2F46.1.1
  6. Walsh, Toby (September 7, 2017). Android Dreams: the Past, Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence. London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd. pp. 89–97. ISBN 9781849048712. OCLC 985805795.  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/985805795
  7. Polanyi, Michael (1974). Personal Knowledge : Towards a Post-critical Philosophy. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226672885. OCLC 880960082.  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/880960082
  8. Autor, David (2014), Polanyi's Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth, NBER Working Paper Series, Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, pp. 1–48, http://www.nber.org.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au/papers/w20485.pdf 
  9. Prassl, Jeremias (2018). Humans as a Service : the Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 138–139. ISBN 9780198797012. OCLC 1005117556.  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1005117556
  10. Badger, Emily (January 15, 2015). "5 Confounding Questions that Hold the Key to the Future of Driverless Cars" (in en). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/15/5-confounding-questions-that-hold-the-key-to-the-future-of-driverless-cars/. 
  11. Vardi, Moshe (February 2015). "Is Information Technology Destroying the Middle Class?". Communications of the ACM 58 (2): 5. doi:10.1145/2666241. https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/2/182648-is-information-technology-destroying-the-middle-class/fulltext. 
  12. Susskind, Daniel (2017), Re-Thinking the Capabilities of Machines in Economics, University of Oxford Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series, Oxford, OX, pp. 1–14, https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/15127/825-susskind-capabilities-of-machines.pdf 
  13. McAfee, Andrew; Brynjolfsson, Erik (16 March 2016). "Where Computers Defeat Humans, and Where They Can’t". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/opinion/where-computers-defeat-humans-and-where-they-cant.html. 
  14. Carr, Nicholas (September 29, 2014). The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (First ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 11–12. ISBN 9780393240764. OCLC 870098283.  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/870098283
  15. Kaplan, Jerry (August 4, 2015). Humans Need Not Apply : a Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 41–43, 145. ISBN 9780300223576. OCLC 907143085.  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907143085
  16. Simonite, Tom (May 17, 2017). "Google’s CEO is excited about seeing AI take over some work of his AI experts". MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607894/why-googles-ceo-is-excited-about-automating-artificial-intelligence/. 
  17. Brynjolfsson, Erik; McAfee, Andrew (January 20, 2014). The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (First ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 47–50. ISBN 9780393239355. OCLC 867423744.  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/867423744
  18. Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 978-0688121419. OCLC 28723210.  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/28723210
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