AI can augment human intelligence rather than replace it

Will artificial intelligence take over human lives and reduce us to secondary status and thus bring to life various sci-fi scenarios as many seem to think? Or is it just a fad and this too shall pass as many others seem to think?

To answer this, let us first understand three terms - Artificial Intelligence (AI), Predictive AI and Generative AI that have grabbed mind space and headlines around the world. AI refers to technology that enables machines to mimic human intelligence, thinking, and problem-solving abilities. It allows them to learn from experience, adapt to new inputs, and make decisions similar to humans. Generative AI creates new content like text, images, or music based on learned patterns, while Predictive AI uses data to forecast future events, such as weather predictions or sales trends. So, you could say that the predictive AI function is aligned with the left brain i.e., logic while the Generative AI is aligned with the right brain i.e., creativity.

The use of predictive AI is not exactly new. In banking, it has been used before for credit decisions.  It is now potentially transformative in both scale and accuracy be it analysing credit history, income, and other factors to arrive at a credit decision as the underlying algorithm and data quality can be continuously monitored to arrive at reliable results

The question is how much of this is hype and how much is reality? AI is a blend of genuine innovation and hype. While it has made remarkable progress in areas like natural language processing and image recognition, there are also challenges like bias and hallucination that affect its efficiency. The concept of general artificial intelligence, mimicking human cognitive abilities across tasks, remains more theoretical than practical. What it has however done is show that creative tasks which were considered exclusive human preserve can now be automated too.

Does this mean that human intelligence can be fully replaced, and jobs are clearly on the line? Experts like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil predict AI could replace human intelligence by a certain date, but these are predictions, not certainties. While AI can automate tasks and mimic human intelligence, human cognition and emotional intelligence still excel in areas like creativity, critical thinking, and empathy. My take is that AI can augment human intelligence rather than replace it, enhancing collaboration between humans and AI.

Coming to the big question about jobs, let us go back to the eighties when the fear was that the introduction of computers would take away jobs. The reality is that while the mundane jobs disappeared - for instance how many people remember the typewriter today - it created new jobs that required higher skillsets and spawned India’s software revolution.

Something similar could happen, with AI automating certain tasks, leading to job displacement but also creating new jobs that we cannot yet imagine. Skilled professionals will be needed for AI development, maintenance, and oversight, and careful planning will be necessary to ensure these changes benefit everyone.

In some ways, the advent of AI only re-emphasises we live in an era of continuous learning. In short, it is no fad but on the other hand, it is not goodbye to human intelligence either.