In an economy where data is changing how companies create value — and compete — experts predict that using artificial intelligence (AI) at a larger scale will add as much as $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. As AI is changing how companies work, many believe that the next...
Are humans and machine really in competition with each other though? The history of work — particularly since the Industrial Revolution — is the history of people outsourcing their labor to machines. While that began with rote, repetitive physical tasks like weaving, machines have evolved to the point where they can now do what we might think of as complex cognitive work, such as math equations, recognizing language and speech, and writing. Machines thus seem ready to replicate the work of our minds, and not just our bodies. In the 21st century, AI is evolving to be superior to humans in many tasks, which makes that we seem ready to outsource our intelligence to technology. With this latest trend, it seems like there’s nothing that can’t soon be automated, meaning that no job is safe from being offloaded to machines.
In its simplest form, AI is a computer acting and deciding in ways that seem intelligent. In line with Alan Turing’s philosophy, AI imitates how humans act, feel, speak, and decide. This type of intelligence is extremely useful in an organizational setting: Because of its imitating abilities, AI has the quality to identify informational patterns that optimize trends relevant to the job. In addition, contrary to humans, AI never gets physically tired and as long it’s fed data it will keep going.
Machine Intelligence vs. Human Intelligence
In general, people recognize today’s advanced computers as intelligent because they have the potential to learn and make decisions based on the information they take in. But while we may recognize that ability, it’s a decidedly different type of intelligence what we possess....
In its simplest form, AI is a computer acting and deciding in ways that seem intelligent. In line with Alan Turing’s philosophy, AI imitates how humans act, feel, speak, and decide. This type of intelligence is extremely useful in an organizational setting: Because of its imitating abilities, AI has the quality to identify informational patterns that optimize trends relevant to the job. In addition, contrary to humans, AI never gets physically tired and as long it’s fed data it will keep going.
These qualities mean that AI is perfectly suited to put at work in lower-level routine tasks that are repetitive and take place within a closed management system. In such a system, the rules of the game are clear and not influenced by external forces. Think, for example, of an assembly line where workers are not interrupted by external demands and influences like work meetings. As a case in point, the assembly line is exactly the place where Amazon placed algorithms in the role of managers to supervise human workers and even fire them. As the work is repetitive and subject to rigid procedures optimizing efficiency and productivity, AI is able to perform in more accurate ways to human supervisors....
Augmented Intelligence
Augmented intelligence, as the third type of AI, is the step forward to the future of intelligent work. The future of work is a concept used to indicate the growth of employees and their performance in more efficient ways. The debate on this topic, however, has become quite ambiguous in its intentions. Specifically, because of cost-cutting strategies narratives, businesses today are in a stage where machines are often introduced as the new super employee that may leave humans ultimately in an inferior role to serve machine. An essential element of a truly intelligent type of future of work, however, means that we do expand the workforce where both humans and machine will be part of, but with the aim to improve humanity and well-being while also being more efficient in the execution of our jobs. So, augmented intelligence is indeed collaborative in nature, but it’s also clear that it represents a collaborative effort in service of humans...
