Augmented Intelligence! Redefining the Division of Labor between Humans and Artificial Intelligence

I felt compelled to write this article after listening fascinating podcast from Jo?lle Pineau (Director of Meta's Fair Lab) on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in which a quote from Yann Le Cun was mentioned: "Artificial intelligence will soon surpass human intelligence." Yann LeCun has made immense contributions to the progress and accessibility of AI and is undoubtedly a distinguished expert and scientist. However, I can't help but be unsettled by this assertion.

How can we claim that something is superior to another when the subject of comparison itself is poorly defined and characterised? What is intelligence? What is its nature? How does it manifest? How does intelligence emerge from our cognitive processes? Is it an emergent property of its architecture and processes, or is there something deeper?

Roger Penrose, a mathematician and Nobel laureate in physics, attempts to understand how thought "pilots" cognitive processes in his book "The Emperor's New Mind." Penrose speculates that neurons might behave like a Bose-Einstein condensate. Similarly, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate John Eccles tries to explain in his book "How the Self Controls Its Brain" the functioning of the mind through "discrete" quantum mechanisms. These two eminent scientists suggest that the mechanistic view based on brute computational power is likely far removed from the reality of the brain's and human mind's capabilities.

We must avoid the trap in which science sometimes falls. In 1907, physicist A. Michelson, a Nobel laureate in physics, declared that all the laws of physics would be understood within a generation. I quote: "The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals." Nearly 120 years later, the fog between quantum physics and general relativity has not lifted, especially with the latest observations from the James Webb Telescope.

Another question still without an answer is how we transition from "inert" matter to living, intelligent matter?

We must remain humble about our knowledge and avoid falling into the mirage and magical thinking of techno-science. Instead, we should use AI as a multiplier of human intelligence rather than subtracting human intelligence from the equation. Otherwise, the effects would be unpredictable and incalculable.

A recent example that definitively reinforced my view on an ecological and sustainable use of AI (Societal, Environmental,Economic "SEE") and my motivation to share it occurred at "Geek Day," a pop culture event in Lille, a large city in northern France, similar to Japan Expo. My children, a son in his final year of engineering & AI school and a daughter in medical school, told me about their day and an interesting discussion they had with voice actors. These voice actors are "real icons" in their respective countries, with fans and part of the universes of video games, animations, and Hollywood films. These actors provide the soul to the films, conveying emotions through their voices. These voice actors are resisting the use of AI, particularly with the breakthrough of generative AI. Their concerns are easily understandable, but that wasn't my main interest. We should not fear progress, only how we use it. I was more interested in the opinion of the younger generation regarding the situation of the voice actors. I was surprised to see how supportive and even very worried they were about the prospect of AI replacing these actors.

With a bit of provocation, I asked why they were worried since AI would do the job very well. My children simply replied that they would never identify with a disembodied and emotionless AI. Cyberpunk wouldn't have as many fans if the digital hero of the game, Keanu Reeves, wasn't incarnate! The film and video game industry must carefully evaluate the collateral damage by analyzing all the aspects listed in Figure 1 below, under penalty of massive disaffection from these segments of fans. Our AIs will never go to the movies, attend eSport competitions, or buy the merchandise from the wonderful universes they create.

My humble conviction is that we have a middle way, i.e., an ecological approach to AI usage by redefining a new division of labor between humans and AI. To build this ecological (SEE) trajectory, I rely on two very simple analytical frameworks.

?The first aims to sustainably and ecologically answer the questions in Figure 1. If we only address economic performance to the detriment of societal and environmental aspects, there will be totally deleterious and unpredictable effects

The second analytical framework focuses on mapping and grouping processes according to the optimal human + AI combination across four major types of interactions materialised in the matrix in Figure 2

The third graphic characterises each quadrant of the matrix in terms of combining the areas of excellence of humans and AI in the search for optimal, sustainable, and ecological performance.

Logically, an important step must be undertaken upstream: the referencing and mapping of the company's critical processes. This mapping will serve two objectives that ultimately will establish a strategic, sustainable, and ecological AI roadmap.

Objective 1: Identification of the company's strategic and critical processes.

Objective 2: Disassembling processes into coherent and cuttable blocks to determine the role AI will play in the blocks according to the previously described characteristics.

With Dr. Hichem Maya , a specialist in process transformation, we are working on a pragmatic method of systematic, rapid, interactive analysis and mapping that places business actors at the heart of this re-imagination process. The method is based on Design Thinking and a redesigned Business Canvas to meet the needs of a truly "ecological and sustainable (SEE)" transformation of processes through AI.

To conclude, this article is a plea for equitable human/AI collaboration, where AI serves to enhance human performance rather than replace it. To illustrate this, I invite you to watch the scene from the cult film Interstellar. This scene perfectly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2H1s9gj5DA illustrates the conviction that humans have the ability to "transcend logic" through subtle mechanisms that John Eccles and Roger Penrose sought to explore and explain.