"Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take away all our jobs!". We have all heard this refrain. Having gone through the great recession, globalization, outsourcing and automation, people are understandably concerned about AI and their jobs. I am sure there will loss of jobs and creation of new jobs. The AI revolution like every other revolution will create turmoil. On the other hand it will also raise humanity to greater heights.





AI is still a baby

Artificial Intelligence, despite being researched for decades is still in its infancy. It is relegated to very specialized things like number crunching or translation and does not do well with general intelligence tasks. It is easier for AI to translate millions of books than folding the laundry.





It is easier for AI to translate millions of books than folding the laundry.

Even in specific and well defined use cases AI doesn't do well on its own. Let's take radiology as an example where Machine Learning based AI programs have access to a lot of images to learn from. It seems obvious that this would be a piece of cake for AI. It might in the future, however, there was a recent experiment where an AI program was trained to identify cancer in scans of lymph nodes. Despite training, the AI had a higher error rate (7.5%) than human radiologists (3.5%). Yes you read that right dear AI enthusiasts, AI didn't beat humans in that experiment. Do I hear a collective groan from our AI fans? Well, don't fret, read ahead.

Collective Intelligence

I left out one piece of information about the experiment. When AI and humans collaborated, i.e. the scans were run through AI and then the radiologists reviewed them the error rate dropped to 0.5%. What is that? That, my friends, is the power of "Collective Intelligence"

Humans have used collective intelligence over centuries. Humans were not only intelligent but were also able to work together to get more productivity than each of them separately.

When it comes to intelligence, the sum is greater than its parts.

More recently humans have worked collectively with machines, be it traditional manufacturing machines or using computers and non-AI programs to get their jobs done faster. When was the last time you ran to the library to look up the formula for CAGR or calculated that by hand instead of using your trusted excel? You are already using computers in your collective intelligence tribe

AI + Humans

With the AI revolution, humans will do what we do best, i.e. add AI to our collective intelligence tribe. Lawyers will use AI to draft the tedious parts of contracts and will focus on the more compelling items, doctors will let AI narrow down diagnosis, farmers will use AI to target pesticides and fertilizers to specific parts of their crops which will free them up to run the farm. The use cases are plentiful.

I for one, welcome our robot colleagues who can add to our collective intelligence. While it will be a net positive for humanity, AI can and will have negative impacts to some people. it will be up to us as a society to make sure we are all lifted up by the AI wave. Yes, it will be challenging but challenges are what we humans excel in.

Let me end with this great quote from John F Kennedy

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work - John F. Kennedy





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Tagss: #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #cobot #CollectiveIntelligence #ML #MachineLearning