We continue presenting a series of articles on talks related to the Munich-AI Summit 2018 hosted by Develandoo – AI Innovation LAB on May 17, 2018.  Our previous article was devoted to Distributed Autonomous Real-Time Systems presented by one of our speakers, Lenz Belzner, Head of Data Science and artificial intelligence at MaibornWolff.

”I believe that future is about human + machine. Let’s be more Human-Centric”. This time we present Soumyasanto Sen’s talk on Human+Machine collaboration.

Soumyasanto Sen is an Advisor/Evangelist/Investor in People Technologies, Digital Transformation, Management Consulting. He is the Co-Founder & Partner of the blog People Conscience and a 30+ Top Global Influencer in HR Tech of 2018. Soumyasanto is currently engaged in AI-driven Analytics, Cultural Analytics, Blockchain, Gig Economy and Future of Work for People-Centric businesses and Transformations.

Sen believes, in a world where the impact of AI technologies is growing, we should not forget about the human, as our speaker says, ”about us”.

Sen says the human aspect is very important. If you see also the impact of AI automation from the past, it existed there for a long time. So robots are working with humans in the production line and manufacturing field from long decades.  He believes AI exists in many spheres and that its impact is not only on businesses and industries but also on humans professionally and personally.

”You open your smartphones. I think 50% or more than 50% of the apps are using somehow some aspect of AI technologies, even Facebook, Twitter or anything”.

Sen also speaks about one of the threatening phenomena of today. It’s job displacement through AI, which he says will put millions under risk. Every job will be affected by AI from cooks, servers, cleaners, and construction laborers to lawyers, human resources management, marketers, salespeople, reporters, and developers.

Sen, however, argues that in the future, AI should not replace humans but rather work with them. This is the so-called mindset of the no collar workforce where humans and technologies, like machines, are working together. The skills and practical capabilities of machines and humans can be combined together. They can collaborate. ”The future is about achieving human intelligence, understanding human-level intelligence in terms of generality and performance.”

He further explains that there are cases where AI-based programs are very powerful in terms of performance such as Alpha by Alpha 0, but if they are considered in terms of generality their use cases are limited. ”Because we cannot use AlphaGo program or the algorithm on a model on other things, because it is developed to do only this one. The performance is high but in terms of generality it’s very low”.

Soumyasanto Sen believes that a world in which artificial intelligence takes over human intelligence has a long way to go. If you really think that AI will fully automate human function, in his opinion,  you’re going to be waiting an upwards of 200 years to get there.

”So replacing human with AI technology is not going to happen now. So what’s happening now is not about the transformation, but the use of AI in actual transformation of your business. I think that’s the most efficient way we can think to use AI and there’s nothing wrong in that since it’s a very powerful technology, but we have to think in a way how it can radically transform your business not to automate your processes rather create new processes and new business models, which can help you grow in terms of your competitors, in terms of your business.”

People+technology collaboration is to build a business successfully. When mentioning people, Sen speaks not only about employees but also about partners, customers and anyone related to that particular part of the business.

”For your business to be of high value you need the right mindset, right leadership, right strategy and an important one is the culture.”

He brings the audience’s attention to an important idea, that if a person doesn’t understand what his/her business needs and what is going to affect it, there is no use of investing so much money on these technologies.  It’s very important to understand your business before you can understand how AI can impact your business for better.

You can go deeper into this topic by visiting our youtube channel where you can find talks by our speakers.

We are thankful to all our sponsors and participants and the speakers for attending our AI summit the one and only free event at Munich related to Artificial Intelligence. Their contribution in making our AI-summit more productive and complete is really huge. It will become even bigger for the next year because we believe that the science should be hip and free. We invite all the representatives of Artificial Intelligence companies, AI experts, and simply those who are interested in AI innovation, AI big data analytics and want to exchange thoughts and know more about the opportunities this sphere of science gives.

Initial registration for Munich-AI summit 2019 is already open on our meetup page. https://www.meetup.com/ai-munich/events/251011537/

See you all there.

• Topics:
• Artificial Intelligence
• M-AI Summit