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Topic : Referring to machines and sensors as "knowing" I'm editing a technical text about autonomous systems. I feel the following sentence is anthropomorphizing a machine and also introduces some confusion - selfpublishingguru.com

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I'm editing a technical text about autonomous systems. I feel the following sentence is anthropomorphizing a machine and also introduces some confusion because it can be easily misread as talking about the machine operator knowledge:

A clear separation of control and protection is possible if the safety-critical protection function can be specified and implemented without having any knowledge of the workings of the control function.

It might just be coming back from a holiday, but I can't for the life of me think of a suitable alternative to talking about the machine having knowledge. Does anyone have any suggestions? Or... am I overthinking it, since now we have fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning that constantly use these terms?

(Note that there is also work to be done on the rest of the sentence since it is wordy, but I want to address this issue first!)

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An alternative is "information".

I would say "without requiring any information on the specific workings of the control function".

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I don't see a problem with the use of the word "knowledge" in this context, but I do agree that there's some ambiguity about who should not have that knowledge - the function, or the person implementing it. That ambiguity can be eliminated thusly:

A clear separation of control and protection is possible if the safety-critical protection function can be specified and implemented without it having any knowledge of the workings of the control function.

It should be pretty clear that "it" refers to the function.

If you're dead set on removing the anthropomorphization, however, I think the most sensible alternative would be "information":

A clear separation of control and protection is possible if the safety-critical protection function can be specified and implemented without it having any information about the workings of the control function.

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