Process Safety, Gorillas and AI

Process safety is usually approached as a technical discipline concerned with hazards analysis, vapor dispersion, equipment limits, and layers of protection. At the next level up, professionals frame it as a management challenge involving systems such as employee participation, operating procedures, and incident investigation. Yet underneath both of these dimensions lies an ethical foundation: process safety exists because human life is treated as a value in itself. This creates a persistent tension in the process industries, where investment decisions must be justified in financial terms even though no credible monetary value can be assigned to loss of life or serious injury.

The rise of artificial intelligence has brought this difficulty into sharper relief. As AI systems take on more decision-making responsibilities — not only in administrative tools but within online control and optimization systems — they must be instructed where to draw the line between efficiency and safety. In other words, they need to be told how much investment, margin, or conservatism is justified in order to protect human life. The post Process Safety, Gorillas and AI examines this dilemma through analogy and argument, showing that as AI capabilities grow, the industry will have to articulate its ethical priorities explicitly, not merely rely on technical or managerial conventions.