The question of AI and the future of work needs to be reframed. This can be done by focusing on tasks within a job and think as though computers and people will carry out tasks they can do best separately. This approach will enable us to think more about people and computers and less of people or computers.
This mindset would shift the attention from: what intelligent computers can do, to what intelligent human-computer groups can do, also known as superminds.
Superminds: groups of individuals acting together in ways that seem intelligent.
Combining individual minds of people and computers will develop outcomes that cannot be done by either alone. So when we focus on human-computer groups or supermindsthe threat of AI to replace humans changes to AI as a tool to augment people through more effective collaboration thus complementing each other’s skills.
While AI systems may be better than humans at crunching numbers, finding patterns, and remembering information, humans are more skilful at tasks that require general intelligence, such as non-routine reasoning, defining abstractions, interpersonal and physical skills. Moreover, in hyper connected groups, AI could be a tool or assistant to humans, but may also act as peers ot managers for humans. Together, human computer groups / superminds will carry out things that were not possible before.
Organisations today view the implementation of AI and other IT tools as a substitute for human labor as they continue with the same activities. alternatively they may pass of part of the employees work to customers which may lead to a decline in quality, when using AI for cost-cutting, it is not a panacea. Improved results emerge when focusing on creative ways to configure groups of people and computers to implement valuable tasks.
Examples:
- Automated menus in telephone customer-service systems and self-service check-out kiosks in stores.
- Supermind design is an approach used by MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence, which includes systematic techniques that trigger creative insights on ways to configure human computer groups. This approach enabled the development of a new system that detects and treats adult depression in Japan using AI, social media, and human facilitators.
Source: https://medium.com/meshai/why-conversational-ai-is-the-new-ui-65a43638f5e7
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_oPtEjiVuA
Curious about this? have a look at these documentaries:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_ZzhadA3DY
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBxsFXip4bY