The New View of Safety Is Rapidly Aging. What Will Be Next?

The “new view” of safety and Human and Organizational Performance reshaped the profession by rejecting blame and recognizing human adaptability as a source of resilience. However, these frameworks emerged when humans were central to control and decision-making – a context that’s rapidly changing. Automation, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence increasingly shape work, reducing or displacing the human role in many high-risk systems. In this environment, approaches grounded primarily in human performance risk becoming incomplete. This session will present the argument that the next evolution of safety must move beyond the human-as-buffer paradigm toward system-level intelligence, foresight and design resilience. We’ll explore how safety matures from human-centered learning to rapid risk systems, networked intelligence, far-miss anticipation and adaptive stability in an AI-enabled future.