Augmented Intelligence: Marrying Humans & AI for a Win-Win Business

Will AI replace our jobs? - One question that most of us have pondered upon at some point in our careers. 

In recent years, there has been a growing concern about job displacement due to advancing technology. Whether it’s asking Alexa to turn off the lights, enabling smart traffic management, self-driven cars, or robot-assisted surgeries; you name it and artificial intelligence performs it. 

Artificial intelligence refers to a machine’s ability to effectively automate tasks without any human intervention. Results? Streamlined processes, 24x7 availability, improved productivity, new inventions, digital assistance, and so on. However, there’s also a big downside to these emerging technologies, especially when things go haywire. Imagine a customer incurred a million-dollar loss due to one poor decision made by artificial intelligence. Now, the customer will abandon the technology, which ultimately means abandoning the organization and humans. 

Computers, who are the decision-makers, are not held accountable for disrupting creative industries, perpetuating biases, and spreading misinformation. But in the end, it’s the humans who bear the brunt of disgruntled users. So, is it fair to vest the ultimate decision-making authority in technology? 

Enter Augmented Intelligence

The augmented intelligence market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 25.1% during the forecast period to reach USD 54.7 billion by 2026 from an estimated USD 17.9 billion in 2022.

There’s no denying that artificial intelligence organizes, structures, and analyzes treasure troves of data like no other. That’s why in circumstances where complex patterns from big data volumes need to be drawn, it can determine superior outcomes than human-based decision matrices. But when it comes to independently performing complex divergent thinking, AI is not smart enough to outsmart humans.

Artificial intelligence can only replicate human actions and not their thoughts. 

If you intend to experience the best of both worlds—artificial intelligence and humans, augmented intelligence is your go-to solution. As the name suggests, it is designed to augment human intelligence and not replace them. Here’s how. 

In the digital world, every successful organization sits on a goldmine of data, which if not processed, analyzed, and optimized can be detrimental to their success. Did you know that the global data sphere will reach slightly over 180 zettabytes by 2025? Now, imagine how overwhelming it would be to manually process, structure, and analyze such a gigantic database.

Augmented intelligence gives actionable insights into these humongous databases to improve human-decision making. It is a subset of AI and ML that involves human intervention at every step of the process to reap technological benefits, shielding humans and their creativity from any harm. 

Marry the analytical power of AI with the complex divergent thinking of humans and build the business of the future.

Augmented Intelligence Application 

Augmented intelligence and deep learning have applications in industries that mine big data for patterns and predictive indicators. Let's take an example of the customer service industry wherein the ultimate goal of support agents is to deliver a frictionless experience and ensure high customer satisfaction. On that account, it is crucial for them to prioritize cases with extreme negative emotions. 

However, rummaging through each case manually in the burgeoning caseload can be daunting. That's why support organizations deploy ML-powered tools, like Escalation Predictor, that can sift through the entire ticketing software in a jiffy to analyze the nature and severity of complaints in real-time and notify agents accordingly. Once AI plays its role, humans enter the scene to help customers with faster resolutions and pacify the situation to the best of their capability, thus reducing attrition. 

There’s no magic to AI. It is only as smart as we humans make it. That said, humans would have taken forever to analyze what computers can analyze within seconds. So, let machines do what they are good at, and let humans do what they’re good at. Who knows what they can help you achieve by being in cahoots? 

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