The debate about importance of AI in our lives may never end. However there are ways in which AI is augmenting human life and vice versa.

We are aware that AI has the power to transform our lives forever. AI is leveraging machine learning and computer vision for the detection and classification of objects, data patterns, and others. AI-powered robots are optimizing rote tasks like product assembly and monitoring; AI chatbots are helping enhance customer service experiences. So the list never ends. However, have you wondered about the possibility of integrating human intelligence and AI? Well, Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk had mentioned in an interview about humans merging with AI to create a symbiosis leading to a democratization of intelligence. Famous Tech enthusiast, Tim O’Reilly is also an advocate of this symbiotic relationship.

While AI has been altering how industries function, it can be more beneficial by augmenting human abilities rather than posing a threat to steal their jobs. A report from Harvard Business Review discovered that firms achieve the most significant performance improvements when humans and machines work in sync with the other. This surge in performance was possible through such collaborative intelligence, humans and AI actively enhance each other’s complementary strengths: the leadership, teamwork, creativity, and social skills of the former, and the speed, scalability, and quantitative capabilities of the latter. Even in areas involving cognitive skills, communication skills like empathy, understanding context, establish a humanistic connection,  achieving key competence, generating the content, picking the best of choices, utilizing common Sense, thinking creatively, and critically humans offer a better edge. The report suggests that to gain maximum benefit from this collaboration, companies need to 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.

For example, a team at Harvard Medical School showed that deep-learning algorithms designed to identify cancer in lymph node images yielded significantly better results when combined with analysis from human pathologists. Through collaboration, the pathologists and AI algorithms achieved a 99.5 percent success rate in, accurate cancer diagnosis compared to 97.1 percent when the AI system acted alone. Let’s consider another example where AI and Humans can benefit more. Consider agriculture where the AI system can deliver the pesticide and forecasting future pesticide requirements. In this case, the farmer can track the AI system’s decision-making, stepping in to intervene where required while interacting with the equipment and pesticide suppliers. In some sectors, AI can get progress started, but may still rely on a human to complete the job by verifying the accuracy or providing more context. These gray areas include services like accuracy checks and human interaction.

Elon Musk also suggested that by fusing people with super intelligence (through bionic chip implants) could open healthcare benefits like treating spinal cord injuries and improving human memory, helping people avoid dementia. So as technology advances, digital intelligence will also exceed the biological intelligence of humans too. On the other hand, including a diverse human group can bring collective and comprehensive data that can lead to better yet neutral machine learning algorithms. Even sites like Netflix, Spotify which use machine learning need human input to come up with better recommendations. In a Forbes article, it was quoted that the symbiosis of humans with AI can drive the economy to greater heights. This happens when AI augments human capabilities and enhance the work processes such that it results in higher efficiency. This can, in turn, lead to cutting down exorbitant prices, which in turn drives up demand and spurs growth.  So, the conjunction of AI and humans is needed now. We need machines, and AI needs us.