Coexistence of Man and Technology: What Artificial Intelligence Breaks, Hybrid Will Fix

The reconciliation of humans and algorithms could be established by hybrid intelligence by optimizing algorithmic and human creativity, or the way in which humans and artificial intelligence (AI) communicate. Scientists expect that its potential applications and strength will significantly change the world as we know it today, including even their careers. For example, the consulting group McKinsey, in the methodology of QuantumBlack and agile multidisciplinary teams, is already using the combined strength of artificial intelligence and human creativity for research and data analysis. The conclusion would be that whoever establishes a balance between AI and human creativity first will have an advantage over competitors because hybrid intelligence will enhance business models and innovation. For this reason, hybrid intelligence has become the subject of research at global scientific centers, and large companies have also joined them.

Thought Leadership

The global consulting firm specialized in innovation and engineering, Capgemini Engineering, which operates within the eponymous group, has launched a research project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the development of thought leadership, assets, and services to strengthen trust in future technologies and the ways in which technology can help address key challenges of a smarter industry. At the launch of the collaboration between MIT and Capgemini Engineering, William Rozé, the company’s CEO and a member of the Executive Board of Capgemini Group, stated that achieving a high level of trust in AI-based systems is a key driver for realizing a smart industry. However, Jacob Sherson, the director of the Center for Hybrid Intelligence in Aarhus, Denmark, stated that hybrid intelligence is currently just a ‘dot on the horizon.’ This Center deals with interdisciplinary research on digital interfaces that facilitate collaboration between humans and algorithms.

– Hybrid intelligence does not only imply taking over current job functions, which are then enhanced by artificial intelligence, making people a little more efficient, but it tries to see how we can rethink the way humans and technology coexist and what they can do together. Philosophically speaking, we are trying to combine the best of both worlds, but we have not succeeded yet, said Sherson.

Reasons for Previous Failures

According to his claims, hybrid intelligence should play the role where artificial intelligence has failed. Namely, the application of artificial intelligence in companies is mostly unsuccessful. Hybrid intelligence should correct this. However, such intelligence barely exists, even though there is enthusiasm and a need from an industrial and corporate perspective to urgently launch related projects.

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Many applications fail in the real world. Although AI performs its job excellently in the laboratory, it has not proven successful in corporate applications as expected. As many as 70 percent of all corporate AI projects have little impact, and half of senior managers in companies find it difficult to integrate artificial intelligence into business processes and systems. This is a problem that Sherson and his team of scientists are trying to solve, but he cites several reasons why neither artificial nor hybrid intelligence has achieved its full potential.

Some of these reasons include an ethical code, which is still being developed to support the creation of hybrid systems, and a lack of a common language between corporations and scientists dealing with data who design the application of artificial intelligence in corporate systems.

– Some of the problems that the Center for Hybrid Intelligence is trying to solve include understanding how people think, the roles of intuition, common sense, and creativity, and what all this means for optimizing human interaction with technology. Its scientists explore topics covering human individual and collective behavior and machine optimization, and they assign specific tasks to humans that are difficult for computers to solve. They then compare human and algorithmic solutions and create synergy between humans and artificial intelligence through optimized games that involve direct interaction between the two sides, said Sherson, emphasizing that these are the first steps on the path to true hybrid intelligent systems.

Best for the Customer

Much has already been said about how artificial intelligence affects or will affect business and which jobs will disappear because of it, but there are still no answers to the question of how hybrid intelligence will primarily affect employees in research and development in companies, experts with specific knowledge, as well as the scientists who develop it. Many of them are already concerned about what kind of upheaval the optimization and application of hybrid intelligence will cause in the future and how it will affect their jobs and careers. However, Sherson claims that, in the medium term, there is no need to fear because organizational changes are much slower and more complicated in the real corporate environment. Although knowledge-based jobs will ultimately be affected in some way, only a smaller portion will be replaced in the medium term.

Nevertheless, organizations around the world are already taking steps towards a future enabled by artificial intelligence and some form of hybrid intelligence. The company Stitch Fix, specialized in sending customized clothing packages to customers, is one of the successful examples of applying hybrid intelligence for commercial purposes. In each package, it sends five pieces of clothing, and users can choose whichever they want and return the rest. What Stitch Fix does is very effectively combine a data-driven model with a human approach. Relying solely on a data-driven approach would suggest that the company should send customers only black underwear and black shirts since that clothing is, on average, most often kept, but instead, it combines a data-driven approach with individual stylists who choose items and gradually learn to communicate with customers on a personal level. With this personalized and specialized approach, the customer gets the best. Despite the challenging path to creating true hybrid intelligent systems, Sherson believes that there is revolutionary potential for hybrid intelligence if scientists can create systems built on the strengths of humans and artificial intelligence that are applicable in the real world.

Tools for Greater Productivity

Serial entrepreneur Davor Runje, co-founder of the startup Airt Technologies, claims that exciting times await us due to everything happening in the world of new technologies.

– Artificial intelligence is developing much faster than anyone among experts thought was realistic just a few years ago. Things that were thought in 2020 to be achieved only in ten years were already completed by 2022, but many things that were not believed to be possible until 2030 were also completed by 2022. This primarily relates to large language models and generative models in general. Today, more and more people use ChatGPT daily for writing assignments, emails, programs… Designers have received a new tool that creates illustrations, photographs, as well as website designs, business cards, and everything else in a matter of seconds. None of these tools are at a level to completely replace humans, but they can significantly increase their productivity. Thus, programmers estimate that due to Copilot, which writes parts of code itself, they are up to five times more productive, and a similar situation will occur with many other professions, says Runje.

New Organization of Society

He emphasizes that the fundamental question is how this increased productivity will affect the economy, i.e., whether there will be mass layoffs or whether this productivity will only result in greater created added value. According to him, the answer to this question is not simple, nor is it one-dimensional, as it depends on the profession, as well as the time frame in which we observe this phenomenon.

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– In the short term, automation will certainly reduce the number of jobs because existing processes can be organized with fewer people. On the other hand, many new jobs will open up, and professions that did not exist before will be created. One such profession is the so-called prompt engineer, i.e., a person specialized in creating instructions for generative models. In the short term, I fear that automation will eliminate existing jobs faster than new professions will be created, and an additional problem is that it is difficult to quickly retrain people who have worked in automated jobs for something else. In the long term, many believe that the need for human labor will simply decrease and that we will have to organize society differently to function under such conditions, says Runje, citing one possible solution to these problems, a basic monthly income that every person would receive simply for existing.

In some countries, experimental projects related to this are already being conducted. Work would, in that case, if machines could perform almost all jobs equally well as humans, but much cheaper, become a kind of hobby.