Do computers plus humans do better than either one alone?

 

We are fascinated with robots because they are reflections of ourselves

Ken Goldberg

Being a science fiction fan, I have always remained inspired by the characters like Rodney Copperbottom, Piper pinwheeler, and obviously the Optimus Prime from Transformers. These characters are an excellent manifestation of human imagination of befriending robots and stepping into the domain of augmented reality. As a piece of evidence, global corporate giants are investing substantially in acquiring AI with the global AI market reaching 327.5 B USD in 2021. 

The innovations like self-driving cars from Tesla, the City Brain Project of Alibaba, Amazon Go, and smart personal assistants like Cortana that literally is a click away on my desktop are enthralling human societies. Despite such an evident human aspiration, AI is now projected to confront human boundaries that, arguably, is a simulation of human intelligence. This is the point where the concept of Human-AI symbiosis comes into action.

HumanAI symbiosis goes against the Human AI collision and works on the principle of Human AI augmentation where the competencies of both the players combined can do wonders. As Campbell (2016) says, "computers plus humans do better than either one alone”. Let's consider the example of IBM’s Watson. Watson operates on the principle of machine learning, has learned from humans, and is now recognizing cancer patterns. Moving ahead to a humanoid robot Sophia that can’t only interact like humans but also can perform many of their tasks. Interestingly, the Japanese Pepper Robot is capable of reading human emotions proving not to be the fair weather partner of humans only. However, still we are halfway on our journey of trusting robots highlighted by the psychological phenomenon of the uncanny valley according to which we, as humans, are willing to accept the human likeness in robots but not them as exact replicas of us.

References

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Jarrahi, M., 2018. Artificial intelligence and the future of work: Human-AI symbiosis in organizational decision making. Business Horizons, 61(4), pp.577-586.

Pinney, J., 2022. Medical robots: their facial expressions will help humans trust them. [online] The Conversation. Available at: <https://theconversation.com/medical-robots-their-facial-expressions-will-help-humans-trust-them-154868> [Accessed 28 September 2022].

Siegel, R., 2016. 20 Years Later, Humans Still No Match For Computers On The Chessboard. [online] NPR.org. Available at: <https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/10/24/499162905/20-years-later-humans-still-no-match-for-computers-on-the-chessboard> [Accessed 28 September 2022].

Thormundsson, B., 2022. Artificial Intelligence (AI) worldwide. [online] Statista. Available at: <https://www.statista.com/topics/3104/artificial-intelligence-ai-worldwide/#dossierContents__outerWrapper> [Accessed 28 September 2022].