Shaping the Future Human Experience
AI and digital platforms challenge how we understand reality and our role in it. Because it mirrors our identity, technology provokes us to revisit outdated creeds while at the same time giving us the reins to personalize our human experience.
In the evolution of species, there's always a fine line between symbiosis and competition for survival. Is AI going to take over the world? Will AI take my job? In fall 2020, a Google search returns over 1B results for each of these questions. Internet users are particularly interested in how the AI-human symbiosis will shape over time. More than anything, people are apprehensive of a future where the power dynamic changes to humanity's disadvantage.
The advent of AI might seem overwhelming to us, but history books consist of many pages on similar topics. One such example is the industrial revolution of the 18-19th century, which helped automate the labor workers did with their hands. The industrial revolution was a painful tipping point; it led to decades of social and economic upheaval, but it also freed up time for thinking, inquiring, and innovating.
You can argue that the industrial revolution expedited the timeline for advanced technology like AI. Across the world, automation and artificial intelligence are beginning to permeate entire industries. Knowledge workers previously untouched by the industrial revolution (accountants, lawyers, bankers) are likely to undergo career transitions as their jobs change substantially under the guise of automation. A research report published by the Harvard Business Review concluded that automation affects high-skill workers more often, but low-skill workers more deeply. Just like personal computers impacted people across the board, AI heralds a cognitive revolution that will free up time for people to feel, create, and experience - assuming we can meet our basic physical and psychological needs.
AI's true potential does not come from automation alone, but from how it can become a symbiotic part of life, enhancing - not replacing - the output of people. Beyond being an ideal work colleague, AI could also play the role of a life partner, empowering us to master our human qualities and elevate our life experience to new heights. AI can help us understand the human condition, improve our life perception, and coordinate a healthy body and mind.
#explainableHuman
Human-machine collaboration requires contextual comprehension between people and machines. If humans are capable of explaining themselves, so should machines. But are humans truly capable of explaining themselves?
I've recently watched an authentic retrospective between a couple who failed to make their romantic relationship work. While grown-ups, these people could not explain why they acted a certain way in the relationship. There are many reasons why individuals cannot articulate their feelings. Sometimes you do not have the vocabulary to translate what you feel into a logical framework. Other times, you're not even inhabiting the present. At times, you're experiencing an emotional hijack.
The bypassing of logic is what psychologists refer to as an emotional hijack. The amygdala, the part of the brain that serves as our emotional processor, can hijack the normal reasoning process. This hijacking mechanism helped our hunter-gatherer ancestors survive through harsh conditions. Back in the early days, when we lived in caves and hunted our food, our primary objective was to guard against reptiles, predators, or other cave dwellers. We needed a brain that was hyper-vigilant and quick on the trigger. Thanks to recent neuroscience advances, we know that processing information logically requires complex neural architectures to work in tandem. The complete orchestration of neurons can take a longer time than our ancestors had to evacuate the danger zone. While the amygdala design helped with physical survival, its interjection in modern-day settings is not always ideal.
“I see...the moving object in front of me is indeed a reptile. A rattlesnake, to be more precise. Let me think: what’s the best way to proceed? If I move left, I will expose my naked ankle to its fangs. If I move right, then the snake would need to twist around to reach me, and that delay would buy me another split second...Oh, and by the way, I’m speaking from my grave.”
Our cognitive capabilities evolved over the past thousands of years, but not the framework for accessing those cognitive capabilities under pressure. We are still subject to the impulsive control of the amygdala. It takes an active effort to switch from the fight-of-flight reaction of the amygdala to the poised methods of the frontal cortex. The amygdala will make your veins swallow, raise your heart rate, cloud your judgment. On the other hand, your frontal cortex will identify that you feel hurt by a comment made by your boss and analyze solutions to restore emotional balance in that work meeting.
How can you transition from an impulsive brain to cognitive behavior? Ideally, you'd teach your brain new tricks that help it reason through threatening situations. That journey can be an overwhelming one to travel alone or without support. Some companies are already working on tech that leverages data and AI to help us handle emotions either passively through meditation, actively through talk therapy, or more invasively through feedback relayed by brain implants. These personalized, data-driven tools can coach the brain to make sense of what it feels and gradually equip us to own the life experience fully.
#healthyHuman
Healthcare is an analytical discipline, unlike its sibling -wellness- which can wander away from science. Whenever you apply a scientific lens to a problem, you model that problem space based on empirical observations and experiments. The healthcare model of the world is an odd one because it assumes the presence of disease. When we talk about healthcare, it all trickles down to the illness: which one you have, how you will treat it, which side effects you have, how you will handle those. Financial incentives in the American healthcare industry reward the management of the disease, while disease prevention is the rare exception on your list of insurance benefits. Maybe healthcare should be rebranded to #sick-care since we care for the sick and ignore the seemingly healthy.
AI heralds tectonic shifts for the healthcare industry, especially when it comes to our ability to prevent disease onset and progression. Improved imaging technologies can pick up risk factors from a more easily accessible surface like the eye retina. Portable body scanners enable remote workers to screen patients with a device the size of a mobile phone. And AI reading machines can go through medical records and discern the likelihood of disease from medical cues written down by doctors. Genetic testing brings us closer to predicting the risk of illness decades before disease onset. With a clear understanding of each individual's health outlook, we can affirm healthy behavior and offer personalized support in vulnerable areas. Imagine living in your optimal state; imagine personalized experiences curated for your wellbeing. Data-driven life experiences can help us enjoy life at our full potential.
We typically design AI to drive efficiency and efficacy in economic or business processes. But AI can also contribute to less utilitarian applications such as supporting introspection and personal reflection. AI opens up new horizons for self-understanding. When you understand and accept yourself, life becomes limitless. With inclusive AI design, we can ameliorate rather than exacerbate inequalities, and help individuals experience a fulfilling life.
