Humans are artificialized and AI is humanized



In a brilliant HBR article, I did learn about the ‘AI fallacy’ - the view that the only way to get machines to outperform the best human professionals will be to copy the way that these professionals work. 
If AI was merely copying human knowledge and behavior, how is it then possible that Google’s’ DeepMind easily beats the world’s best Go player?

“The error here is not recognizing that human professionals are already being outgunned by a combination of brute processing power, big data, and remarkable algorithms. These systems do not replicate human reasoning and thinking. When systems beat the best humans at difficult games, when they predict the likely decisions of courts more accurately than lawyers, or when the probable outcomes of epidemics can be better gauged on the strength of past medical data than on medical science, we are witnessing the work of high-performing, unthinking machines.”

Much work (in most industries) has first been standardized and is (as a consequence) now being digitalized. This explains why ‘senior’ positions in job openings are now for folks with 3-5 years or 5-7 years of experience. Senior in this case means having the experience of applying certain methodologies and tools. This is not senior in terms of dealing with non-standard complex problems. And especially not in dealing with complicated relationships, emotions, and cultures. Recent research is actually showing that as a result of our superficial interactions with digital devices, we are losing cognitive abilities as well as interpersonal sensitivity and emotional intelligence. If you don’t believe this may I suggest that you do spend some time in a library and watch how young people study? It is really very saddening to see that their maximum time of focus seems to be 3 minutes or so. There is no space for deep thinking anymore. That is why their cognitive and emotional capabilities are declining. And their way of dealing with emotions is limited to the number of emoticons they add in their messages. 

In 1986 I was hired by a global IT company (DEC) to ensure that tailored solutions that were individually negotiated with large customers, were appropriately delivered, administered, priced and invoiced. These were all exceptions to the standardized portfolio. So, if a customer wanted us to do preventive maintenance on disks in the weekend instead of during weekdays, we made sure that our engineers would actually show up in the weekends. That was a very interesting role that required extensive communication with all the stakeholders in the process. Fast forward to 2016. In our home, we concluded a new contract for the Internet, TV, and telephone with Ziggo. When they were installing everything it was noted that our KPN telephone could not be transferred, as an alarm system needed the old analog line. Technically they did make it work, well at the start. Now our phone number has been ported to Ziggo who cannot provide these phone services at all. The reason for these problems is that everything is standardized and they have no process in place to deal with exceptions. 
What we could do in 1986 seems now way to difficult for these people!

It is therefore that I am adding the ‘human fallacy’ - we think that we are much better than robots/systems at dealing with emotions, collaborating and being creative.  This is not the case anymore. Systems are already better than humans at recognizing emotions in viewing facial expressions. Humans have many biases that trouble our perspective; intelligent systems don’t have these biases.  Also, we humans are not good at solving complex problems. COP25 (the UN Climate Change Conference) is starting next week, which means that we are already working on this issue for 25 years and we haven’t solved it yet. Economists are not capable of building a system with no unemployment. Depression is growing, especially among young people.

It is time to look in the mirror and regain our humanity, to stand out, to make time and effort for deep thinking. Learning is much more than consuming some 140-character messages. We are sleeping with our eyes open. It is time to wake up and collectively address society’s big challenges! Seniority and wisdom are what we need. That wisdom is gained through many years of effort and experiences. I know many of these senior and wise people. It is time that their value is being appreciated and used for the common good. Instead of labeling people who are older than 40 years as too old (and sometimes useless), it is a requirement to benefit from their insights. For them, it is easy to be better than robots. How about yourself?

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