When Machines Think for Themselves : the AI mystery

Google AI creates its own child AI.

On one hand, we are currently at a fascinating point of time, a significant technological revolution to which we have aspired and also feared . We are at a time in which machines are more intelligent than humans. When we ourselves build machines that can think for themselves, program on their own, and create new technologies independently.

On the other hand, The power of the brain goes beyond its internal connections, and includes its ability to communicate with other brains. This penchant, more than any unique cognitive ability, enables us to dominate the planet and construct objects of exquisite complexity.

Now we are adding machine intelligence to our own. As the sophistication and complexity of our technology grows, so too must the intelligence that operates them. Eventually our tools will think for themselves, perhaps even become conscious. Some people find this a scary prospect. If our tools think for themselves, they could turn against us. What if, instead, we create machines that love us?

Since we, the human beings, are the programmers, we can make a positive connection between the machine and humans.

Artificial intelligence is becoming good at many “human” jobs—diagnosing disease, translating languages, providing customer service—and it’s improving fast. This is raising reasonable fears that AI will ultimately replace human workers throughout the economy. But that’s not the inevitable, or even most likely, outcome. Never before have digital tools been so responsive to us, nor we to our tools. While AI will radically alter how work gets done and who does it, the technology’s larger impact will be in complementing and augmenting human capabilities, not replacing them.

Certainly, many companies have used AI to automate processes, but those that deploy it mainly to displace employees will see only short-term productivity gains. In our research involving 1,500 companies, we found that firms achieve the most significant performance improvements when humans and machines work together. Through such collaborative intelligence, humans and AI actively enhance each other’s complementary strengths: the leadership, teamwork, creativity, and social skills of the former, and the speed, scalability, and quantitative capabilities of the latter. What comes naturally to people (making a joke, for example) can be tricky for machines, and what’s straightforward for machines (analyzing gigabytes of data) remains virtually impossible for humans. Business requires both kinds of capabilities.

To take full advantage of this collaboration, companies must understand how humans can most effectively augment machines, how machines can enhance what humans do best, and how to redesign business processes to support the partnership. Through our research and work in the field, we have developed guidelines to help companies achieve this and put the power of collaborative intelligence to work.

(https://hbr.org/2018/07/collaborative-intelligence-humans-and-ai-are-joining-forces)