‘Executives need to prepare their people to “go meta,” leaving the constraints of the environment and moving to a higher abstraction or complementary level.’
Physicist and consultant Philipp Gerbert says the current focus on AI as a task assistant ‘is shortsighted and underestimates the transformative potential of AI.’ He points to advances that have machines learning largely on their own, without training data from ‘the real world.’
He foresees at least three forms of machine-human relationships:
- Augmentation – machines supplement human activity
- True human-machine collaboration – machines and humans come up with similar results, the ‘human-in-the-loop’ adds judgement
- Hyperlearning – machines acquire knowledge autonomously and are able to create virtual products and services, humans add little to the process
Philipp Gerbert is a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group. His Ph.D. is in physics from MIT.
AI and the ‘Augmentation’ Fallacy
MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW | May 16, 2018 | by Philipp Gerbert