Mr Spock, you have the conn.

It's interesting to think that Star Trek foresees the use of a naval term which dates back to the 1800s. The conn refers to control of the a ship, usually controls these days but previously the rudder control.

This ritual means  it's always clear who is in charge with the handover being unambiguous. 

I thought of this when hearing about the death of of a driver of an automatic car made by tesla.  

The driver apparently only had his hands on the wheel of the self driving car for 27 seconds of his 37 minute journey. However the manufacturer recommends that you keep your hands on the wheel at all times, even when the machine is in charge. 

I'm sorry, but that's not clear enough to be safe. Either I'm driving or you are, either I have the conn or you do.  

That's something we can learn and a mistake we can avoid as we see the growth in Artificial intelligence and Augmented intelligence in medicine.   Either the AI is taking the decision fully and is recognised as such, the best example being warfarin or an econsult which has an outcome and the human will accept the recomendation as reliable, or the human still has the conn and takes the AI or AugI under advisement. 

Effectively this  is a binary representation of the fluid negotiation which occurs between a clinician and their patient during every consultation. However that also fails due to lack of clarity, the number of times patients say they persisted with inadequate or inappropriate treatment because the doctor told them to, is legion. 

Unfortunately we are the designers of the intelligence, we are the users, and we, not the intelligence, will suffer if the lines of responsibility are not clear. 

Mr Spock, you have the conn.