Credits: Unsplash

We are in the age that has witnessed most influential advancements in AI and most of them are here to stay. But there is a distinct difference between many of the AI tools that we are using in our daily lives.

How would you define Artificial Intelligence? According to wikipedia, the definition starts as follows:

“Artificial intelligence is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by computers, as opposed to intelligence displayed by humans or by other animals.”

In essence, when a computer is able to learn the underlying pattern of the data it is fed, and able to make inference to solve a certain problem at hand, the machine is said to have artificial intelligence.

On the other hand, if a machine is aiming at enhancing a human’s capability in doing a task, by reducing the time required, or by giving meaningful insights, or by helping in making the right decisions, or by enhancing the human’s own cognitive skills, the machine is said to have augmented intelligence.

Let’s understand the above distinction with real life examples.

Credits: Unsplash

Autonomous Vehicles: Companies like Google Waymo (Google Self-Driving Car Project) and Tesla are using AI to create self-driving vehicles. These vehicles use a combination of many sensors like LIDARs, Cameras and AI algorithms to navigate the routes without human intervention (i.e if they reach the level of 4, 5 or above). This is a classic example of artificial intelligence where the decision making is totally up to the machine and humans have very little to do unless there is an emergency.

Credits: Unsplash

IBM Watson: IBM’s Watson’s use case in healthcare, for example, can assist doctors, or medical practitioners in diagnosing diseases, or coming up with a good prognosis, by providing a vast range of medical information to them and suggesting potential diagnoses based on the patient’s symptoms and other information given to the system. This helps the doctors to enhance their own capabilities by reducing the time required to reach a conclusion or to help them see all the possible (even the unlikeliest) diagnosis possible. Such systems works in partnership with humans and not a completely autonomous system that makes decisions on it’s own.

Another example of Augmented intelligence was or is perhaps used by most of us, Grammarly! The digital writing assistance tool, is a great example of augmented intelligence. The software uses artificial intelligence algorithms, including natural language processing and machine learning, to check grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, and style in real-time. However, the ultimate decisions and control over the writing, still lie with the human user.

Credits: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/augmented-intelligence/

To people who are outside the technical fields and wary of the possibility that machines might replace humans, Augmented intelligence systems might seem more acceptable than Artificial intelligence systems. Augmented Intelligence allows for a creative partnership between humans and machines and instead of replacing humans and automating the job at hand, it becomes a powerful tool at our hands to enhance our own intelligence. Be it either way, these machines and their creativity are nothing less of a marvel and is the true attestation of human ingenuity.

Until next time!