How love and fear of cognitive technologies define our relationship to artificial intelligence

To many of us it seems like advances in cognitive technologies are going on so fast that we can barely keep up with the conversation anymore, even though we are carrying our day to day life using these technologies.

It’s often the case where we talk about artificial intelligence with fear and trepidation, but we are using it ever more frequently now, and it’s likely that the potential for its use in new business models will only make it more attractive to companies looking to become competitive in the current market.

But exactly what is it that scares people about AI? Well, it may not be your typical Terminator scenario, but there is legitimate preoccupation with the fact that automated processes can significantly decrease the use of human work force and result in unemployment.

The more optimistics say that automatic processes will allow for human creativity to expand beyond the mechanical and the freedom it’ll provide will be used in pursuing the goal of happiness. Most of us fall right somewhere in the middle.

Our automatic life

The use of AI in our daily life is evident but its effect can be subtle, we start to shop according to what self-learning algorithms suggest about ourselves, or we may take their advice regarding investments, or use it to gather data about consumers and potential clients. We may not be ready to let our cars drive themselves just yet, but trust is being built in AI to take over important tasks and improve our lives in many ways.

However AI is also redefining the work model, since its introduction it has been modifying business structures as the result of its power to improve productivity and sort information much more efficiently.

The key research is into developing models using cognitive technologies that can not only improve the performance of any particular business and reduce costs, but that can also improve the human workforce performance in the company.

The future of business and companies

Think about how a worker who’s constantly dealing with clients would perform if he had all the information about the client’s preferences at hand, in the form of glasses for example, as Google has produced, so he can check in real time and provide a more personalized service to the client right in the moment. Now think about the case of airlines and pilots.

AI could be introduced to take over the more tedious and mechanical tasks allowing the pilots to step in when necessary, this would mean a more efficient use of the human work force and savings in different training processes currently used by most airlines.

Yet we are not only hesitant when it come to letting AI take over certain jobs, we are many times even terrified, as in the case of self driving cars, however we will have to learn how to overcome some of our biases and implement the use of these technologies in our businesses if we want to remain relevant and competitive, and maybe we can take advantage of their use and see the positive side that the more optimistic people try to tell us about AI.