AI? ‘Artificial or Augmented Intelligence’? — or: Why the Cat is a Croissant
Recently Artificial Intelligence (AI) has caused a lot of attention everywhere in the data driven and data engineering world. Everyone wants to know more about it — if they are developers or data scientists, they start looking for machine learning, algorithms and classification.
If they are decision makers in the enterprise world, government organizations, engineering companies, NGOs, you name it, they look for explanations — or perhaps even duck their heads, for fear not to be equal to the highly technical terms and ideas associated with this new technology.
Statistics at the Root
Actually, its roots lie in the 60s and 70s of the last century, when mathematicians and business school professors were looking for new methods to handle large amounts of statistical data — and create reliable prognoses based on such data.
What Exactly is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence in a little more simple terms, describes the possibility which exists these days that by mathematical computation, based on statistical algorithms, a certain amount of data prepared in machine readable format is analyzed as to its history and volume (number of items). When batches of data have been analyzed a couple of times, the algorithms involved start calculating possible future occurrences of such data, based on what was there before.
Example: Natural Human Intelligence and Probability
Put it this way as an example:
as a human being you would look at a crossroads for a week and count all occurrences of bicycle riders, cars and pedestrians on any given day. After some time, the data accumulated would allow you to say: ‘based on what was there before, chances are that on Tuesdays about 100 persons will ride bicycles here.’
This is what happens when algorithms calculate such data. Data can be more complex than in this example, graphics exist, that represent the ‘clouds’ of data one could find, their distribution in a given environment and the reliability of one algorithm over another in a certain use case.
That is why people who understand the underlying science and calculations to the full, also know, statistics are at the bottom of all of it.
The Cat and the Croissant
Here come in cat and croissant of the title: such algorithms frequently confuse images that are similar in texture, form and colour with each other and declare a comfortably sleeping cat to be a croissant.
Human Creative Intelligence
Opposed to this, the intelligence of a human being and its decision making capabilities are based on education, visual impressions, smell, sound, experience, and — emotions. Without emotion, human beings are unable to decide between pros and cons of a situation in a complex matter. Why?
Because emotions are the deciding factor and driving force in human decisions. Brain surgery is at the bottom of this realization that poets for centuries and Sigmund Freud in particular in psychoanalyzes posed: Remove the part of the brain that ‘processes’ emotion — and all existing skills knowledge and facilities of the person in question are useless, because they cannot decide — for or against anything.
This fact leads us to the realization that the sum of a human being’s possibilities make for creative intelligence, the real thing. Where unheard of solutions and new inventions are made possible by synthesizing ideas, knowledge and goals to create — new applications, devices or mechanisms.
Augmented Intelligence
These two sides of the question — artificial intelligence vs human creativity and decision making — lead us to call the ‘calculating’, machine driven and processed data engineering statistics Augmented Intelligence:
It is an intelligence that augments what humans possess and have possessed for millions of years: natural intelligence that is creative. Our algorithms and classifications support our digital transformation in fast, scalable and highly adaptable ways to process huge amounts of digital data for better understanding, and decisions, complementing what humans can do best: be creative.
