Say H-AI

Would you say humans had learnt to cooperate with each other enough to survive the changes that are coming? A swift, cynical answer might be ‘No’. The wars and disagreements going on are as bad as ever. There is strife over import tariffs, over Brexit, over Iran, over the dreadful Syrian conflict – the list can go on and on. But look again.  Almost the whole of the world’s population is making some effort to deal with climate destruction. The way our business and political lives work is more through cooperation than through competition. We work together a lot more than the news media would have us believe. Humans are part of the cooperative species.

Now we have to cooperate with inventions. We’ve been doing this for some two centuries. Today’s inventions are rather more advanced. At lunch with a young lady the other day I commented on the remarkable watch she was wearing. She told me it recorded every heartbeat, every breath she took. It told her when she was hungry, tired, even when too worn out to drive a car. Soon her watch will tell her the amount of caffeine in her body and other information highly relevant to her welfare. It will tell her what to eat, when to sleep, probably even when to make love.

You may think it dominated her life. Actually it was a simple, primitive demonstration of human / data cooperation. I hope she remembers to listen to the birds, watch a sunset and admire a good bed of flowers. With all our facts we need the yeast of feeling and the frisson of a beautiful horse. Given that, we should be able to cooperate with Artificial Intelligence, at least until it overtakes us and becomes our ruler. Would that be such a bad thing?

Total rationality about everything we think, do and plan might sound very dull. Where’s the room in that for creativity? If the matter was total, there would be none. But total is a long way off, I think.

Before we reach it two things will happen. First, we will learn so much more about AI that we should be able to control it better than we fear we can now. Second, our own brains will become subject to physical manipulation, just as our bodies have over the last century. The difference is that our brains will be modified much faster, ironically with the help of AI.

So I suggest you say HAI to Human-Artificial Intelligence and get it working as soon as possible. You’ll see that we already espoused it if you look at our website. The next great adventure is to see how we can apply it to improve personal performance much further. We are already doing so but the scope for using AI further is considerable. Is this through tests, games, stories? All three but primarily through the key to all intelligence, the ability to perceive relationships. We already use an advanced test to identify these characteristics. We are developing more ways to do so.

Harness AI to our innate ability to innovate and invent and you will have power undreamt of in the history of humankind so far. The intelligence we now call artificial is our invention.

We have the wit to deploy it for the benefit of everyone.

H-AI starts with Human. Let’s keep it that way.