TED, Kasparov, and a Rethink of AI

In 1985 Kasparov beat 32 computers at once – "That was the Golden Age, machines were weak and my hair was strong!”

It’s been 20 years since my father first attended TED back in Monterrey, and 20 years since Russian chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov faced IBM’s Deep Blue in Philadelphia.

Well, this year Kasparov was invited to speak at TED and yours truly was invited to attend. My, my, how times have changed. :)

In that time we’ve seen a dramatic change in the narratives related to computing science and machine learning. And although Kasparov lost to a supercomputer back in 1997, it wasn’t until last year when DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat 18-time world champion Lee Se-dol in Go, the ancient Chinese board game, that people really started to pontificate about the technological singularity. Now the debate around artificial intelligence is not just topical, it’s inescapable.

It should serve as no surprise that TED took this topic head on, and I attended many talks that were dedicated to the myriad of issues we will encounter in this new era. The sessions were aptly themed - One Move Ahead, Our Robotic Overlords, The Human Response - and the conversations that ensued between attendees during the breaks were equally as discerning and critical.

But here at Quietly we’re a bit more optimistic. That’s because over the last four years we’ve taken a thoughtful, pragmatic approach to embracing - not battling - machines. It’s also because we believe there is a continuum to be explored instead of picking sides in this often oversimplified and polarized debate.

As Kasparov remarked, "Machine triumph is a human triumph, something we tend to forget when humans are surpassed by our own creations." This embodies the spirit of my team and why we prefer the term “augmented intelligence” over “artificial intelligence”.

Practically speaking, we blend a combination of applied engineering (natural language processing, machine learning, statistical modelling using large data sets, recommender systems, etc) with super savvy humans so that we can become faster, better, smarter for our clients. In other words, augmented intelligence is something we do day-in-day-out.

The importance of this term didn’t really set in until I was having a conversation with another TED attendee in the theatre. He too believed that people need to consider a wider spectrum, and went on to say that people in our field have a duty to manage those expectations accordingly. He was delighted to hear my point of view, how that philosophy manifests in the work we do, and was unsurprised to hear how successful we’ve been as a result.

It was the “duty” comment that hit me, and as Kasparov recounted the history of machine intelligence through the microcosm of chess, I felt validated and encouraged.

I am encouraged to unpack the conversation and shift the language so people have a better understanding of how computers can make us all more efficient. In other words, it made me realize that we have an obligation to help elevate the discussion around ‘AI’, not bastardize it further.

Our CEO famously declared that “if you’re not using data, you’re either lucky or wrong” but we take great effort to ensure we’re insights-led, not data-bound. And in this crazy world, it’s that killer combo of technology and human intuition that helps companies like ours outperform the rest.

Sitting on top of the world with TED hall-of-famer Richard St. John.