Augmented intelligence will help, not replace, human workers Posted on : Mar 05 - 2020

Augmented intelligence is growing as an approach to artificial intelligence, in a way that helps humans complete tasks faster, rather than being replaced by machines entirely.

In an IBM report called “AI in 2020: From Experimentation to Adoption,” 45% of respondents from large companies said they have adopted AI, while 29% of small and medium-sized businesses said they did the same.

All of these companies are still in the early days of AI adoption, and are looking for ways to infuse it to bolster their workforce. 

Ginni Rometty, the former CEO of IBM, said in a talk at the World Economic Forum that augmented intelligence is the preferable lens through which to look at AI in the future.

“I actually don’t like the word AI because cognitive is much more than AI. And so, AI says replacement of people, it carries some baggage with it and that’s not what we’re talking about,” Rometty said. “By and large we see a world where this is a partnership between man and machine and that this is in fact going to make us better and allows us to do what the human condition is best able to do.”

Augmented intelligence is a cognitive technology approach to AI adoption that focuses on the assistive role of AI.

“I would explain augmented intelligence as something where you are augmenting a human being to do their tasks a lot better or more efficiently,” said Dinesh Nirmal, the vice president of Data and AI Development at IBM. “You’re not replacing anyone, but you are augmenting the skill set of that individual.”

The choice of the word augmented, which means “to improve,” reinforces the role human intelligence plays when using machine learning and deep learning algorithms to discover relationships and solve problems.

While a sophisticated AI program is certainly capable of making a decision after analyzing patterns in large data sets, that decision is only as good as the data that human beings gave the system to use.

Full automation is a ‘delusion’

“Full automation is a myth,” said Svetlana Sicular, research vice president at Gartner. “There is quite a bit of delusion that everything can be automated. There are certain things that can be automated, but humans have to be in the loop.”

She added that the majority of situations for creating full automation are very expensive and very hard to reach.  View More