Human Centric AI

Why my sister can’t be replaced with a bot.

Above this text, you can see some of the coverage that the UK Government’s Department of Education report got in the media. I think we have a couple of things to unpick here.

1) The importance of human-centric automation.

2) A summary of the report behind the headlines and an argument against the specific example of vicars.

3) How, as technologists, we need to communicate more effectively.

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to build upon the capabilities, experiences, and insights of human beings, transforming how we approach various tasks and challenges by supplementing human-like abilities. The process of augmenting human intelligence refers to the use of AI to enhance human intelligence, rather than operating independently of or replacing it. This use of AI is designed to include and balance human oversight across the AI lifecycle. Thomas Watson Jr., IBM’s 2nd President, once said, “Our machines should be nothing more than tools for extending the powers of the human beings who use them,” and one of the reasons that makes me proud to be an IBMer is that we stick to this principle today.

IBM’s Principles for Trust and Transparency delineate the ways in which IBM embeds trust into its technology solutions. The first of these principles…