Human decision-making in the era of artificial intelligence
Humans today are highly technology-oriented, and of course the development and use of technology has played a major role in human development for a long time. The ultimate purpose of technology is to make everyday tasks easier and thus save energy and time.
Technology has enabled people to do things that they could not do with their own strength or abilities, so to speak. One example is the provision of food; in hunting, tools ranging from spears to firearms have been used. Of course, the products of the plant kingdom can be gathered largely without the use of aids.
With technology, man complements himself by exploiting the capabilities of technology in a more or less controlled way. Man is an exception in the animal kingdom with his technological know-how, but he is not the only one to use and manufacture technology. The most technologically advanced are found in the primates family tree, but there are other organisms that make some use of assistance outside their own bodies too.
Technology has enabled so many things in human life and is the cornerstone of modern civilisation. Today, technology is evolving at a frantic pace, changing the world and society in the most imaginative ways.
As I said, man has long looked to technology as a kind of extension of himself. Advanced computers have brought a new dimension to development and opened up a whole new range of possibilities. However, the great leaps in technology have only been taken in the last millennia, and especially in the last few hundred years, i.e. it took Homo sapiens a very long time to make these leaps.
One example, and a very specific one, is artificial intelligence. AI would not be possible without advanced computer technology. AI is also a kind of extension of human abilities, in this case in data processing, as is of course information technology in general.
IT is useful for processing large amounts of data, although humans are capable of processing large amounts of data, but the human system has to cope with many different functions and therefore has limited capacity to process a large amount of text.
A computer, on the other hand, can be programmed to handle certain things and fewer at the same time, concentrating capacity on a specific function. The human brain, even though equivalent to a supercomputer, uses capacity for many things at once, making it more difficult to allocate capacity.
The human brain has a voluntary and autonomic side. These two form a whole that is much harder to control consciously than a computer, the human brain always allocates some of its capacity to maintaining life functions and trying to keep a person alive. A human being cannot therefore voluntarily decide to concentrate all the brain's power on a single task in the way that a computer can be programmed to do.
Modelling the brain with artificial intelligence
AI, which aims to model human thinking, is in practice a very advanced information processing mechanism. Why is it a knowledge processing mechanism? AI has to be taught, i.e. told how things work, how to combine information, and so on.
The main difference between the human brain and AI is that the human brain is capable of producing something new that has never been seen before, while the AI's outputs are based on models it has been taught, i.e. its outputs are variations or combinations of something originally created by humans or occurring in nature.
AI could also be described as a robot that carries out tasks and requests given to it. AI is ultimately about machine learning, a machine that is taught how to do something. It is not itself capable of creative thinking, and is unlikely ever to be.
The human brain is extremely difficult to copy or model, because humans do not even know the full structure and function of their own brains, and are unlikely ever to do so. At best, AI can be a powerful tool and aid in knowledge generation, but it can hardly ever produce original knowledge or creations without human assistance.
Can AI make decisions? Yes, in which case it is automatic, i.e. the program is given parameters in advance and the machine acts according to them. This was invented some time ago, not in the days of AI.
AI is basically a machine that has been taught and programmed to do things in a certain way, for example, given prompts or instructions on what it should do. No machine can function without
instructions and guidance, even a robot needs to know what it is doing and its position, which is why we need senses, or in the case of a machine, sensors and meters.
Is AI capable of creative problem-solving? Under certain conditions, it requires human guidance and assistance. No machine works autonomously, it requires human design, guidance and commands.
AI is capable of forming new combinations of the information it is given, which may look like originals, but in reality are not. Speaking of fakes, AI can be used to make so-called deed fake videos or images. It can be taught to use a particular voice, such as that of a person, in effect using a kind of mimicry technique to pronounce words.
Of course, editing images and videos has been done before AI, so it's not new per se. Even without AI, you can make very convincing and authentic-looking pictures and videos, and AI might just make it easier.
Artificial intelligence as a decision maker
But is AI a decision maker? Yes and no. It can make decisions within the limits set by humans. It is not capable of independent thinking, like a human, but needs patterns and signposts. This analogy applies to all machines.
A machine that cannot perceive its environment and thus make very holistic decisions. Moreover, human and machine learning take very different forms. A machine also needs energy to function, but it is not able to get it by itself; it has to be given it by a human being. Humans know and are capable of obtaining their own food.
Is it man's aim and ambition to make AI a unit like his own brain? Possibly, although the chance of success is very small, almost non-existent. Why? A computer and the software it runs are calculating machines that perform computational operations in data processing. Calculators need information on how to perform the calculation, i.e. instructions.
The human brain is also a powerful calculator, but also much more. The human brain is a calculator, a hard disk and a think tank, with a machine lacking the latter. It is the thought process that separates man from machine, which is why a machine cannot be very creative and do something it is not programmed to do.
Why is creative thinking so important in decision-making? In life and in nature, there are certain patterns that repeat themselves, but not everything always follows them. If everything
worked according to certain mathematical patterns, machines would be strong and basically capable of doing what humans do.
When a pattern is broken, a solution is needed that has never been done before, i.e. a new way of working has to be devised. This is where the machine gets into trouble, it is not able to go against the pattern without doing harm.
Will machines take over? Probably not. It would require very autonomous machines, capable of feeding themselves as well as maintaining themselves. So, in reality, it would require self-aware machines with a will and a purpose.
Machines and AI are prisoners of their own databases, i.e. their capabilities are limited to the information and instructions fed to them by humans. AI cannot give answers that are not in its database, humans can, although the answers given by humans are not necessarily true. But there is a big difference between humans and machines: humans have a good imagination, sometimes too good, whereas machines have none.
In situations that require a lot of thinking outside the box, humans are superior to machines, no AI can ever have all the information in its bank, certainly not humans, but humans can acquire information independently, machines cannot. The machine has difficulty correcting human errors, why? Humans have taught machines, that is, they have passed on their mistakes and limitations.