Human Centered AI for Your Business
We’ve entered an era where AI technology is saturating the market, finding a use for itself even in places where it’s probably unnecessary. Facial recognition technology, household security, grocery store checkout counters, even something as simple as food bowls for your pets can benefit from AI oversight. With more advances in the AI technology field, the more we’ll observe its inclusion in everyday life.
The explosion of AI presence in modern day living stems from a variety of factors. Smart programs are capable of making daily processes easier, more convenient, more capable of efficiently resolving problems tedious and otherwise. If done right, AI can outperform humans in any given environment, helping us in ways we may not even be able to imagine.
As rapidly growing the technology may be, AI is still within its infancy. We don’t have walking, talking robots with credible sentience yet, and it will be some time before we’re able to knock down that wall. AI is still limited in its faculties, making human perspective and input essential for AI success in many situations.
Take self-driving cars for example. AI technology is bringing the entire science-fiction notion of self-driving cars into science-fact, resulting in vehicles that are safer than human drivers because there are no human mistakes resulting from fatigue or illness. By removing the human error factor, cars become more reliable.
Self-driving cars, however, come with their own unique issues that are just as troubling as human error. There will be times where unexpected circumstances produce unexpected situations where humans would react in a safer way than an AI driven vehicle, such as obstacles suddenly appearing in front of the vehicle. That’s not even to mention the moral quandaries to consider, such as whether a car would swerve to avoid a pedestrian, even if it puts the passenger in mortal danger, or whether the car would consider the passenger a priority. It’s the trolley problem, except you’ve left an already challenging decision with a machine that possesses no capacity for that type of critical analysis.
AI for healthcare can help process huge amounts of data and can assist in giving accurate interpretations, but at the end of the day a human doctor is the one responsible for a diagnosis and patient care. AI technology casts a huge net over what functions it can handle, but not everything can be left to software to handle. That’s why striking a balance between humans and AI is imperative for your business.
Artificial Intelligence 101
Here’s the Artificial Intelligence for Dummies definition for what AI is: artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science where a program takes data as input, be it spreadsheets, documents, files, etc. and processes that information through specific algorithms to answer questions regarding that data. The more information an AI program ingests, the “smarter” it becomes in analyzing and answering that input. Essentially, it’s comprised of decision-making technologies.
AI is an incredibly versatile field, finding purpose and value virtually anywhere it can be applied. This is because AI solutions can be as narrow or as complex as needed, depending on the quantity of rules “fed” into it. For instance, a Netflix algorithm reading through your viewing history, finding common patterns, and interprets that information to recommend new movies in your feed.
What Is Human Centered AI?
AI left to its own devices can never encompass every need and comfort humanity calls for, and it won’t for a very long time, if ever. Ergo, the best alternative compromise we can make is through leveraging the competency of AI with the intricacies of humans.
Human-centered AI refers to artificial intelligence that learns from human collaborations and is based on systems that are nurtured and constantly improved thanks to human input, therefore allowing better communication between robots and humans. This type of AI has the goal of bridging the gap between humans and machines: the understanding of emotions, behaviors, and languages. It leverages qualitative data to identify patterns and get a better understanding of drivers, deep needs, and aspirations that rule human decisions. It supports the idea that algorithms used by AI solutions must be designed keeping in mind that they are part of a larger system consisting of humans.
Instead of removing real humans from the process, human-centered AI works with us to help us reach goals. We cover each other’s weaknesses symbiotically, in a way. Machines are capable of massive data analyses that would take humans a lifetime to properly process, while humans are able to guide, manage, and utilize AI to properly conform to human necessities.
Stanford professor and modern AI pioneer, Fei-Fei Li, outlined three guiding principles for human-centered AI:
- The development of AI must be guided by a concern for its human impact.
- AI should strive to augment and enhance us, not replace us.
- AI must be more inspired by human intelligence.
In short, the core guiding principle behind the final design of any AI program is that AI needs to care about humans. It’s easy to play chess when the pieces are inanimate, when there are no consequences to actions made when the data is contained within a self-contained box. Humans, however, are not game pieces. We’re living, breathing, complicated creatures that require attention, care, and consideration for how our lives are dictated and lived.
As such, people cannot be reduced down to raw numbers if AI technology is to mesh smoothly and accordingly into our livelihoods. Our behavior needs to be considered when designing algorithms, business strategies, or policy frameworks, otherwise the resulting AI program will be a dismal failure. AI needs to effectively guide humans in the same way that humans guide AI.
After all, as defined by Standard Notation, human-centered AI is about defining the goals of AI to meet human needs and to work within human environments. Achieving this ultimate end is an ongoing process rather than a final destination, and it begins in the initial stages of designing AI. Artificial intelligence, in many ways, is more than just a tool.
What Are the Benefits of Human Centered AI for Your Business?
Surely, as interesting as it is to prattle on about the virtues of human-center AI design, we’re no more thank talking airs if it cannot deliver viable results for your business. With the implementation of this technology, what can you expect to gain in net benefit? The following are a few selected positive gains you’ll find improving your company via human-centered AI inclusion.
Improved and Personalized Customer Experience
The best business is done proactively, not reactively. The whims of the consumer base flows like the tide, ebbing and changing by factors greater than can be immediately registered by human efforts. Accounting for the customer is one thing that human-centered AI technology does best, and by taking their preferences into consideration customer experience can be improved and personalized.
The advanced contextual analytics of human-centered AI provide insights into what drives consumers to buy what they buy, act the way they act, react the way they react, and so on. Processing this extremely valuable information into actionable data allows businesses to draw strategies knowing exactly what their customers expect. In many ways, you’ll be able to adapt to what the customer wants and needs even before they know it themselves.
Better Informed Decision-Making Processes
The hybridization of human and machine skill sets fundamentally supports each other in the decision-making process. By combining human input and values with machine learning, companies are able to make informed decisions and come up with better business solutions thanks to enhanced data interpretation.
The trouble with the decision-making process is how daunting it is to have a view of the full picture. The human brain remains the most powerful computer on the planet, but it’s not designed to compensate for massive volumes of information. The big picture is, by human efforts alone, oftentimes indigestible. This is where AI comes into play, wherein a supportive tool is provided to turn large amounts of information into comprehensible, actionable data. Then, with a better vision of the company, the decision-making process becomes much less intimidating to tackle.
Reliable and Successful Products
Know thine audience as thyself. Your product should not be constructed in vacuum, cut off from input from the consumer base you plan to introduce it to. User experience is an essential factor in building reliable and successful products, and properly gauging and implementing the necessary changes to make your product more appealing to the public is something that human-centered AI design is perfect for.
What’s important is studying human behavior, particularly that of your target audience, to understand what they need, want, and how your product can provide for those inhibitions. Enhancing user experience in products is generally accomplished through applying behavioral science to tech development and learning about user behavior, subconscious patterns, and what users want exactly out of digital products.
Conclusion
The final product is a reflection and extension of the maker. Like the old adage says, actions are louder than words, and so are the creations you put out into the world. Anything that serves as a reflection of you deserves to be approached and completed with every possible effort, by the best possible means. Tools such as human-centered AI are just a part of the means to brandish the best possible product.
There’s no real guarantee that AI will advance sufficiently to outshine human effort, and it shouldn’t be seen as a means to replace us. Rather, like in the vein of human-centered AI, it’s a field of technology that can work alongside humans to make use better at tasks, instead of trying to outperform us. When humans and machines collaborate, great human progress is possible.
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