Human Mind and Artificial Intelligence

In nutshell, the whole idea of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is to enable machines to perform cognitive functions usually associated with human minds, such as perceiving, learning and problem solving.

 Even though AI’s goal is to ‘copy’ human mind’s capability, there are couple of aspects that differentiate their behavior.

In this article I will highlight four aspects and describe the differences between the human mind and AI/Machines:

 1. Searching for patterns: Story telling vs algorithms

Both the human mind and AI/Machines are constantly searching for patterns in the activities they are involved in. Finding patters enable them to understand and act accordingly.

The human mind is able to process the information and find patterns in story form since story telling has a chronological narrative which is easy for the mind to follow (for example, Jean moved to Paris and then started his new job, then ….).

While this holds true for human minds, AI/Machines use complex statistical and mathematical algorithms to find patterns in the data processed.

2. Processing data/information: Less is better vs More is better

Human brain is only capable of processing information in bite-sized and manageable chunks.  Therefore, not too much information should be provided at once (less is better).

However AI/Machines require big amount of relevant (structured and unstructured) data in order to come up with good results. The more the data, the better the results (more is better)

 3. Empathy and imitation: Natural vs To-be-learned

Empathy and imitation come naturally to people. For example, when you smile at a stranger, that stranger will most probably smile back. Or you will be able to feel the sadness of the person talking to you and you’ll eventually share the pain.

On the other side, machines are not ‘equipped’ with this kind of emotions. However, at some point in time these emotions might be ‘thought’ to robots and intelligent computers (Article: Will Robots Ever Have Emotions)

 4. Decision making: Emotion vs Fact 

People think that they have control over their choices, but most decisions are made unconsciously and are not necessarily based on facts. Therefore, most of the decisions made by human beings are based on emotions.

On the other hand, machine’s decision is solely based on facts, which are derived from the data processed. However, the Machine Learning algorithms are still considered “Black Boxes” since people need/want to understand the rationale behind the results/decisions.

No matter how advanced the AI/Machines will get, it is crucial to keep the actions ethical and decision makings transparent – the advancement should serve the people and make their lives and eventually the business better.