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.
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.
Humans Assisting Machines
Humans need to perform three crucial roles:
- They must train machines to perform certain tasks;
- explain the outcomes of those tasks, especially when the results are counterintuitive or controversial;
- and sustain the responsible use of machines (by, for example, preventing robots from harming humans).
Machines Assisting Humans
Smart machines are helping humans expand their abilities in three ways:
- They can amplify our cognitive strengths;
- interact with customers and employees to free us for higher-level tasks;
- and embody human skills to extend our physical capabilities.
Read the full article by H. James Wilson and Paul R. Daugherty in the Harvard Business Review July-August 2018 Issue here.