ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VS. HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

Column “PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS” by Diego Ingrassia – “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VS HUMAN INTELLIGENCE”
for CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY – New Technologies – No. 270, November-December 2018

It is widely believed that in the next ten to fifteen years we will witness profound changes in the world of work.
A large part of these changes will be caused by increasingly intelligent machines, capable of replacing people in various professions.
Perhaps it is still too early to say exactly what will happen, and indeed many of those who study these phenomena do not agree on the figures; in any case, the social impact of this transformation will certainly be very significant.

The question is a serious one, not least because the danger of an uncontrolled development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), posing it as a real threat to the future development of our civilisation, has not been raised by glossy magazines or broadcasts in search of sensationalist reports, but by the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk and physicist Stephen Hawking, in their appeal against the dangers of an uncontrolled development of AI.

According to a study by two Oxford academics, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, 47% of jobs in the United States could be wiped out by robots and intelligent machines in the next two decades. The topic, however, is still somewhat controversial: a recent OECD survey, by Melanie Arntz, Terry Gregory and Ulrich Zierahn, estimates that just 9% of jobs in the most industrialised countries would be at risk. What is certain is that we are facing an epochal change; proof of this is that, contrary to what many people think, the impact of intelligent machines does not only concern the production sector, but is also expanding to the world of services, where the number of robots and intelligent software interfacing with users is already double the number of robots in the industrial sector.

It is a revolution that is involving sectors of the world of work that were unimaginable until recently, and which are linked to relational activities: lawyers, journalists, military personnel, nurses, doctors, baby-sitters, waiters, call centre operators. In short, no profession seems to be completely safe any more. The fear of machines taking over man’s work is an ancient story that takes us back to the origin of the industrial revolution and the Luddites who destroyed mechanical looms. But today’s fear is no longer towards the machine as a possible substitute for labour power: today the machine challenges the intelligence of man, its noblest aspect. It is for this reason that we must be able to define and describe precisely what distinguishes human intelligence and in which areas it is not replaceable.

We are aware that when intelligence is ‘computational power’, the machine is clearly superior to the human being, but we also know that only in a few cases, moreover controversial ones, has a computer succeeded in passing the Turing test (fooling a jury of experts into believing it is talking to a human being at a distance). If we look at the human brain with its 100 billion neurons and trillions of synapses, we realise that nothing like it has ever been even remotely constructed: to flexibly contextualise elements of meaning in reality; to ensure emotional balance and reasonableness in decision-making; to responsibly understand the consequences of a given choice; to be able to provide answers even in the face of ambiguous situations; to tolerate uncertainty; to act anyway, if necessary, even in the absence of a procedure or programme – these are all hallmarks of human intelligence.

In the at least near future, therefore, there is no elimination challenge with machines; instead, it is a matter of learning to manage increasingly better, as is already happening in some professions, complex systems, evolved machine-human interfaces.
By way of example, I give the case of a large multinational company, Unilever, which since 2016 has adopted a personnel selection process using IA and gamification. The first step involves the opening of job positions on LinkedIn or Facebook by the company.

The candidate registers without having to send a classic CV, an algorithm makes an initial assessment of competences based on the LinkedIn profile. The next step, for those deemed suitable, consists of a series of games measuring concentration, short-term memory, general knowledge, and problem solving. This is also carried out from the comfort of home, from their smartphone.
People who pass this stage must submit a video message of their own, which a sophisticated software processes based on their voice, facial expressions, verbal style and content. Only those who pass this last step are summoned to the company for a classic selection interview conducted by expert psychologists, who will have the opportunity to analyse and evaluate all the data from the exclusively digital component of the selection process, integrating it with their own evaluations during the interview with the candidate.

It is quite simple to see, therefore, that it is impossible to stop the great changes that are taking place, and it is for this reason that the best way to counteract the often unfounded fear of the future is constant research aimed at better understanding the distinctive elements and true value of human intelligence. A large part of this intelligence depends on our Emotional Intelligence, but studies dedicated to understanding the importance of it still have a short history, so the myth of the machine that seems to exalt and revive what for a long time was believed to be the only intelligence, on the one hand fascinates and on the other frightens.

These are reflections that should help us understand how important it is to valorise this peculiar aspect of our intelligence at an educational level in general and in school curricula, starting first and foremost from primary school, in order to continue to nurture, through training, that heritage of cognitive flexibility that has characterised our extraordinary capacity to adapt throughout history.