Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen a meteoric rise in its global footprint, with projections indicating a twenty-fold increase in the global market by 2030. While the advancements are significant, AI’s future growth is contingent on critical lessons gleaned from human intelligence.
The growth and learning trajectory of AI has been remarkable. Since 2010, there has been a two-fold increase in AI and research and a 2.8-fold increase in newly funded AI startups between 2013 and 2022. Even as AI’s prominence grows, the need for human intervention becomes even more apparent.
Global adoption of AI is accelerating. Businesses across China, Canada, the U.K., Australia, and the U.S. are embracing AI, either exploring or actively utilizing it. Anticipating significant life changes due to AI in the next three to five years, 60% of us expect impacts across sectors such as education, transportation, shopping, entertainment, and safety.
However, AI’s advancements do not exempt it from significant challenges. Since 2012, there has been a twenty-six-fold increase in AI-related incidents and controversies. These incidents, including facial recognition errors and AI recruiting tool bias, highlight the need for more human oversight in AI processes. This debunks the myth of ‘Human-Free’ AI, proving that AI cannot independently make flawless decisions and might even make costly errors.
AI’s limitations become evident when we delve deeper. It struggles with narrowing research focus, setting exploration prompts, exerting independent judgment about data, and selecting crucial data. Moreover, AI cannot access human soft skills, such as creativity, empathy, and teamwork. Although AI applications like ChatGPT can pass the Turing Test, they fall short of the Lovelace Test, which assesses AI’s ability to produce unexpected or unexplained results.
The integration of human insight can unlock AI’s potential. Human knowledge and experience with AI curation can equip AI with the ability to multitask, discern, make moral decisions, empathize, and be creative. This understanding of the human role in AI curation can improve the utilization of AI across the board.
Humans can contribute creativity and adaptability to AI, two key elements it currently lacks. By directing AI curation and focusing on basic questions, humans can guide AI toward its full potential. Google’s use of ReCAPTCHA to digitize its back-catalog of books serves as a testament to successful human-AI collaboration. This project required human interaction to verify words that AI struggled to identify, proving that AI’s success often hinges on the blend of human and artificial intelligence.
In conclusion, the path forward for AI is intertwined with human interaction. Those who can shape human-centric commands will play a crucial role in the future of AI. Although AI has come a long way, it must continue to learn from and work in harmony with its human creators to ensure its ongoing development and realization of its full potential. The AI of the future will not be a standalone entity but rather a product of symbiotic development, with the human hand guiding its growth.
The limitations of AI, though significant, should not be viewed as insurmountable obstacles. Instead, they present opportunities for enhancement and growth, calling upon human intelligence to fill the gaps. The issues faced by AI in discerning and prioritizing data, setting its exploration prompts, and explaining its conclusions, are not due to its inherent inability but stem from its nascent stage of development. With human guidance, these challenges can be addressed and transformed into stepping stones toward advanced AI.
Human soft skills, such as creativity, empathy, and teamwork, are areas where AI can glean invaluable lessons. These skills, which are second nature to humans, are currently beyond AI’s reach. By integrating these qualities, AI can become a more effective tool for society, enhancing its ability to understand and adapt to nuanced human needs and behaviors.
The journey towards ‘artificial general intelligence,’ where AI can perform any intellectual task a human can, is a challenging one. However, with the right human guidance, this lofty goal becomes achievable. The key lies in understanding and embracing our role in AI curation, thereby guiding AI toward fulfilling its immense potential.
In summary, the path to unlocking the potential of artificial intelligence is marked by human interaction. AI, as a human-centric technology, stands to gain immensely from the wisdom and intuition unique to its human creators. As we look towards a future increasingly influenced by AI, it is crucial to remember that our role in its development is not just important but indispensable. Our insights and experiences will continue to shape AI’s growth, guiding it toward a brighter, more intelligent future.
Mostafa Razzak is CEO of JMRConnect: Shaping Influence® PR, award-winning public relations firm and frequent contributor covering digital innovations like generative AI, spatial computing, blockchain, fintech, sports tech, cannabis tech, food tech, and content marketing.
