Video Transcript
Artificial Intelligence vs. Augmented Intelligence
I want to share with you the story of how I got to work today.
I submit to you that my drive from my home to my office used 3 forms of intelligence. The first
intelligence was human intelligence. The intelligence there was the intelligence that I needed to operate
the vehicle, to turn the steering wheel, to check my mirrors.
The second form of intelligence was artificial intelligence. Once I got on the highway, I turned on the
self-driving feature in my car. Fancy. Now the car stayed in its own lane, kept an appropriate distance
from the vehicle in front, and maintained a proper speed. No input from me at all.
When I got off of the highway, I used a third form of intelligence: augmented intelligence. Augmented
intelligence, well, that took the form of all the driver-assist features in the vehicle, things like collision
detection, to alert me if I got too close to the car in front, and blind spot avoidance to tell me if there was
a vehicle alongside me as I changed lanes.
Artificial intelligence? Well, that is the ability for machines to perform tasks that normally require human
intelligence, such as reasoning, natural communication and problem solving. It basically replaces the
need for a human. So, computers doing the work as humans not really needed. And the artificial
intelligence performs certain tasks and makes decisions, and it's incorporated into so many systems
today.
Now contrast that with augmented intelligence. Now this is where you have machines. And you have
humans both working together. And they're doing so to enhance each other's efforts when completing
tasks.
Augmented intelligence systems augment human abilities, things like screen readers for the blind,
voice-driven navigation, or my in-car collision avoidance system. They're all examples of augmented
intelligence at work. They act on our behalf in the physical world, but in a way that complements our
own capabilities.
So, artificial or augmented? Which form of intelligence will give us the best results for a given problem?
Well, to answer that, let's create a strength matrix. So, machines vs. humans.
Now, one thing machines are great at is ingesting large amounts of data. They can take in more data at a
faster rate than any human could, and they also don't get tired so they can just keep going and going,
ingesting that data as they go. Machines are especially good at things like repetitive tasks. And to do so
in a way that is reliably accurate. Unlike my spelling of "repetitive". So, if you need to quickly analyze a
lot of data or do something over and over again with no margin for error and then specifically artificial
intelligence is really your best bet.
Now, on the other hand, us humans, well, we have a few advantages, too. We're very good at
generalizing information. We can take a single piece of data and understand the concept that it
represents.
We're also very good at creativity. We can come up with ideas, we can solve problems, and
communicate our findings in a way that, well, machines just can't.
