Could Artificial Intelligence be more Human than You?
For fans of the British TV show Black Mirror, this question was explored in the episode “Be Right Back”, when a woman recreates her dead boyfriend via his digital footprint (no spoiler alerts on how that worked out!). Is it possible for AI to take on all the personality and emotional complexity of a human being? My answer to that is — who cares? Is that what anyone really wants AI to do for them?
AI has tremendous promise to enhance our lives — and to be able to do certain human tasks far better than any human being can do. We don’t need AI to be fully human to be fully and spectacularly useful. There are many tasks that a smart machine can do better than humans- who get tired, or simply don’t have the computational power of AI.
So, what is the value and how is going to make your life way better?
1) Analyze our behavior (and in context) better than we can:
As your Financial Advisor:
are you saving enough for your retirement, and if you buy that new home can you still retire when you want to?
Do you know your seasonal spending habits, and do you plan for them accordingly, or are you perpetually surprised by expenses?
Do you understand how your choice to take an extra few months of maternity leave will impact how much you get in social security when you retire?
As your Health Coach:
are you getting enough cardio time in your exercise regime to benefit your heart?
Is your new low carb diet giving you enough fiber?
Are you getting enough sleep- and when you don’t is there an impact on your blood pressure?
As your Chauffeur:
Taking a long trip and worried about falling asleep at the wheel?
Had a few drinks and want to avoid a DUI?
Vision problems or slowed reflexes that make driving a conventional car no longer an option?
Tired of the wasted time behind the wheel that could be better spent reading, working or sleeping?
Health, finances and transportation are among many places in our lives where the underlying metrics of success are all data and information driven- but also are impossibly complex with a web of interrelated variables. AI is the perfect way to collect and analyze all the data that defines you as an individual- or your surroundings in the case of the self-driving car- and can put the pieces together to get you from point A to point B, with your financial goals, your workout objectives, or literally from point A to point B. No human doctor or financial advisor has the computational capacity to be able to make the useful inferences that AI applications can, and today your car is just a tool. Self-awareness can be immensely enhanced by the truth being served up in a way that we can process it. Check out this article on AI replacement for personal trainers- it may change the way you work out forever! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-27/my-two-months-with-17-wearables-and-a-personal-trainer
2) Be unbiased in its assessment
Bias. A loaded term these days. It is impossible to know whether you didn’t qualify for that loan, or you didn’t get it because of some intrinsic bias from the loan officer. Is the “random” beep when you go through airport security really random? When humans are in control it is hard to know whether the inherent prejudices that people have are more compelling than the facts. Enter AI. Programmed to make decisions on the facts and just the facts- it brings out the best in decision making. We have some very good examples of when humans are forced into “blind assessments” the results can be very different — one example is how blind auditions helps orchestras to eliminate gender bias (https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias). The challenge is that it isn’t practical for humans to go through life blind. But it is completely practical for AI analysis to be done this way.
3) Be available 24/7: A question for your doctor at 3am? Good luck getting them on the phone. A question for your financial advisor on a Sunday? Not going to happen. AI is with you whenever you want it there- a huge plus in the service industry, especially the high skilled industries of medicine, law and finance.
4) Be scalable (i.e. way cheaper than a person): The problem of expensive medical care is plaguing the entire globe- and AI is not going to get rid of human doctors any time soon (hard to imagine with things like setting a broken bone!). However, so much of what doctors (and lawyers and financial advisors, as well as anyone in the advice or diagnostics fields do) is synthesize loads of data and try to understand what others have already concluded about this data. It takes a high degree of knowledge and a lot of work for a person to do this- so it is expensive. All of this can be done with AI- and once the machines are built (not a trivial task) it can be industrialized for a potentially infinite number of users, making the cost that much lower. For finances, the answer is already here (https://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/pefin-ai-financial-advisor.html).
5) Draw inferences and make connections- and find solutions: When you consider all the scholarly journals that have been written across the globe and in the last few thousands of years regarding medicine, it would be impossible for any one doctor to have absorbed all this content. Likewise, when you imagine all of the economic data that is generated globally every day, plus things like the complexities of tax laws (federal, state and local!), plus volatile stock markets and so much more, it is virtually impossible for any individual, or team, of financial advisors to fully understand what the implications are for your financial situation of changes in these variables? Can the advisor then analyze your spending on a transaction by transaction basis in the context of these macro changes on a 24/7 basis? A human can’t- but AI can.
Can AI recreate a human being as in Black Mirror? Not today, and maybe it never should be able to even if it could someday be possible. But that isn’t the point. The promise of dramatically improved quality of service at much lower prices in so many areas of our lives- health care, fitness, transportation and finances to name a few- are where the “super human” abilities of AI shine.
AI can’t, or perhaps shouldn’t, help us in a number of areas- in the building of deep human relationships, for instance, or in the creation and innovation of the next great inventions! This is where humans excel- and eventually perhaps this will be the human condition. Why not embrace our AI driven future and let the machines take care of the rest?
