Human Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence

Digital journey is not just about converging human intelligence and machine learning, but also harmonizing them to create positive synergy in advancing human society.  

Artificial Intelligence is the intelligence presented by computers or software. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be viewed as the ability for a computer to learn and reason. The root of artificial intelligence is artificial philosophy. Will AI become the big helper to advance society, or serious "troublemaker" for humankind?

Intelligence is multidimensional, and subjective as well: Mankind likes to say that a machine or agent is intelligent when they conclude that it acts intelligently and most of all similar to human’s 'intelligent' behavior. If a machine some day performs behavior that just looks plain dumb, but might be actually better in terms of efficiency and goal directed, people might just laugh at it. Intelligence above or parallel to ours is hard to understand and therefore we tend to classify behavior as intelligent when it seems intelligent to us, but we might not understand the concept of intelligence at all. Also intelligence is multidimensional, and subjective as well; and a form of reasoning that is dependent upon a range of rules that human brain calls up, at various levels of intent, quite fluid as information and chemicals--currents change via different lenses such as moral, ethical, emotional, intellectual, promotional, etc.

An alternative perspective to AI is "an artificial implementation of natural intelligence": It is abstracting features from AI and natural (human or other creature ) intelligence. AI may faithfully exhibit these features, but in ways that are functionally very different from natural implementations. Artificial intelligence can be viewed as the ability for a computer to learn and reason. Learning would be generating a hypothesis or output for a certain input data set (either with or without training), while reasoning can be seen as deciding whether or not to act upon those learned hypotheses. Software learning is "adaptive," it becomes Artificial Intelligence only when the software embodies a partial model of human behavior which improves in accuracy with learning. Not many so called AI meet this requirement.

Innate Intelligence & Intelligence Amplification: “Innateness" is a concept that is not well understood. A common example in the literature is the ability of a child to learn a language at a very young age (around 2-3 years). Embodiment suggests that a child is born with physiological capabilities, including neurophysiological capabilities, that support the rapid development of verbal communication. A child is born with the innate capabilities for language. These innate capabilities emerged through the evolutionary process. Situatedness asserts that the actuation of these capabilities and the development of the ability to communicate in a specific dialect arises from the interaction of the child with its parents, siblings and other people. There is significant scientific evidence that the human body (and brain) has evolved over time and that the human capacity for higher and higher levels of cognition has evolved over time. Intelligence amplification is another digital phenomenon. Just take a reasonably intelligent person and give them the Internet and search and they are more capable. Give them a sensing system that is ambiently and constantly attempting to augment their understanding of what they see and hear and you have a human/machine construct that begins to direct its own evolution.

So far, brain is still much advanced in connecting the dots - the very characteristic of creativity. Accurate biological models of the brain would have to include some 225 million billion interactions between cell types, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, etc., and human is the true digital master. Some argue, instead of AI, that "Machine Learning" is the preferred term. It accurately describes what's going on (learning is essential to the function of the machine), and it doesn't carry the emotional baggage associated with terms like "Intelligence" and "Artificial." Perhaps digital journey is not just about converging human intelligence and computer learning, but also harmonizing them to create positive synergy in advancing human society.  

Posted in: Business Intelligence,Connecting Dots