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became a better driver – as we all do. It takes time though. The beauty of the learning machine,
when it’s networked with other machines, is the collective sum of experience that makes up the wisdom of the mind. After one day on the road, self-driving cars are years of driving experiences smarter. A networked, learning machine has a ‘time to competence’ of virtually zero when compared to a human being learning a new, routine task. It is this promise of learning from collective experience, and through digital learning, that will positively impact the workplace. If we could embrace AI and, more specifically machine learning, then would I make the same mistakes others have made before or would a computer spot the pattern and intervene? Would learning be something I have
to do in this world, or would all systems react for me, keeping me out of harm’s way and stopping the cognitive load associated with learning new tasks? That
could free us up to think about more meaningful or creative endeavours; the sort of things no machines could ever do.
The case against AI Reaching the top of Google’s page one search results is incredibly difficult to achieve. Businesses can dedicate entire divisions to playing the PageRank game to get closer to that magical number one spot for a search term that matters – and it really does matter because most of us put faith in that machine. However, if we only ever return the same sort of results, the algorithm can become self-reinforcing. If it makes a recommendation, and everyone uses that recommendation, then it follows that the
machine is probably right and that’s a good result. And for many tasks this will be the case. But what if it’s not? Learning is about making connections,
often between two improbably different ideas. One gift of the human mind is to make meaning out of different concepts. The mind is capable of connecting and applying techniques from one field to another. Yet the chances of you stumbling onto something new and interesting becomes ever smaller when a machine offers the first filter to your world. Facebook receives criticism for this
exact filter behaviour on its news feed page. The social networking service shows you what it thinks you’ll want to see based on your previous habits and the habits of a billion other people. It is not showing you a chronological order of updates as they happened, and that can make for a very homogenous experience. Where is the discovery? Where is the space for original thought? AI, and all of the recommendation
algorithms that come with it, could prove to be the death of serendipity. n
Dr Ben Betts
is Chief Executive of HT2 Labs, and will take part in the ‘AI: show me the money’ panel session on 16 October
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