From the Stirrup to AI: How Automation Transforms Operations

Speech Overview

As an honorary advisor of the GOPS2016 Global Operations Conference, Cui Xiaochun delivered a speech titled “From the Stirrup” that reviews the evolution of tools from a macro historical perspective and envisions an intelligent future for technology operations.

Quick poll: Has anyone ever ridden a horse?

The Stirrup Changed Human History

Without a supporting tool, riding a horse is uncomfortable and limits mobility.

Since the invention of the stirrup, riders could combine with horses, fully exert their strength, and perform shooting, fighting, and other actions while mounted.

This redefined riders as cavalry , creating a new troop type that dominated infantry.

The stirrup originated in China; after the Han dynasty used powerful cavalry to drive out the Xiongnu, the technology spread westward, influencing European medieval warfare, the Crusades, the Renaissance, and eventually the Age of Exploration.

Thus, a small tool liberated riders’ hands, gave rise to new definitions, and sparked massive societal change—paralleling the impact of automation in operations.

The History of Operations

From primitive times to the Bronze Age and now to the so‑called Industry 4.0, operations have evolved alongside human development.

What Does This Have to Do With Operations?

The first stage of operations involved manual, repetitive tasks such as copying files between servers, requiring usernames and passwords.

Writing a script or tool reduced this to a single keystroke, marking the transition from the “primitive era” to the “tool era” and freeing operators’ hands.

As business complexity grew, single tools became insufficient; scheduled scripts automated tasks like nightly disk‑space cleanup, exemplifying simple automation.

Automation of scaling and shrinking resources dramatically improved operators’ quality of life.

However, disparate tools often suffered from inconsistent interfaces and standards, leading to the emergence of “cloud” concepts and platforms such as Docker that unify APIs and reduce errors.

This period corresponds to the transition between industrial 2.0 and 3.0, with the next stage likely being intelligence .

No AI, No Operations

Recent breakthroughs in AI, exemplified by a Go champion losing to a robot, highlight that AI is already here and operations must adapt.

Traditional incident response involves manually checking processes, memory, network, and logs.

By encoding these steps into scripts and adding machine‑learning capabilities that analyze large volumes of user‑behavior logs, a robot can quickly diagnose and resolve issues, ushering in an AI‑driven era for operations.

After freeing our hands with automation, the next epoch is the age of AI.

Thank you for attending; let’s continue to learn and explore together, delivering not only efficient operational work but also value‑added services and even poetic pursuits.