© Tierney_adobe stock comAI systems may be better at certain things than we are. They are fantastic calculators, perceive their environment with sensors and process millions of variables and data, edit them precisely, better and even faster. They can independently recognise patterns or run programmes. But machines do not understand what they are doing. They are still mathematical models, probability calculations.
The appropriate measure: the thinking human as navigator
Sabine Köszegi, professor and academic director of the Executive MBA Innovation, Digitalization & Entrepreneurship at the Academy for Continuing Education (ACE) is sure that -Artificial Intelligence is less intelligent than many people think.- Although their name might suggest otherwise, AI systems may be less clever, but their possible uses are diverse. In particular, they are useful tools to improve the quality of our decisions. For example, medical AI systems in diagnostics support decision-making about the most effective treatment method or make everyday work easier by being able to take over specific work steps.Another milestone in artificial intelligence has been set with ChatGPT, a new generation of conversion agents. AI systems can now write applications, do homework, write poems or create a business plan. At first glance, they make our lives much more comfortable. But this facilitation is treacherous. Too much artificial intelligence dims our autonomy and self-efficacy and makes us appear as puppets of a system. The so-called automation bias, a large (almost exaggerated) trust in technology, gives AI systems a certain neutrality. The automation bias describes people’s tendency to prefer suggestions from automated decision-making systems.
As seductive as artificial intelligence is, in the long run it reduces one’s own creative freedom and thus one’s sense of responsibility. There is a change in the role structure, the machine decides, the human ’manages’ the system. This reduces one’s own power to act, the feeling of responsibility decreases. As prof. Sabine Köszegi puts it "artificial intelligence won’t relieve us from thinking."
Futhermore, people tend to favor the path of least resistance. This leads us to outsource decision-making to automated systems. However, this can lead to mistaken automated information overriding correct decisions. By following automated systems unquestioningly and encouraging people to think like machines, humans are worse prepared for a messy, chaotic and unpredictable future. However, humans offer much more than AI: The unique human skills like judgement, intuition, empathy, trust, critical thinking, abstract reasoning, integrating the context, evaluating norms and so on, help humans to make the right decisions according to the social context. It is therefore of utmost importance that humans remain the only decision-makers: what is the aim, what is the context of the decision, what are the consequences?
Like once the French philosopher René Descartes encouraged people to doubt, this might be the premise of the 21 century: to sharpen one’s own perception and self-responsibility through critical questioning. ’I doubt, therefore I am’, might be the principle for the 21 century. Hence, the appropriate measure for good and correct action succeeds.
In the promising Executive MBA Innovation, Digitalization & Entrepreneurship with Sabine Köszegi, participants will dive into the world of new technologies. They will learn how to judge new paths in technology and read the digital roadmap for your organization, how to detect the innovative potential and how to implement new creative paths and solutions in their organization at an early stage.
Please find further information about the Executive MBA Program online: https://www.tuwien.at/ace/mba-programme/innovation-digitalization-entrepreneurship
Key Facts
Join the infosession on the MBA programme on 5th June, please register https://www.tuwien.at/ace/events/detail/cal-event/idx-28538
About Sabine Köszegi
Sabine Köszegi is full professor of Labor Science and Organization at the TU Wien and academic director of the MBA programme Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Her current research focus is on issues of social robotics and new ways of work. She is chairing the Austrian Council on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and is a member of the high-level expert group on artificial intelligence of the European Commission.Our website uses cookies and integrates content from third-party providers to ensure you get the best experience on our website, for analytical purposes, to provide social media features, and for targeted advertising. This it is necessary in order to pass information on to respective service providers. If you would like additional information about cookies and content from third-party providers on this website, please see our Data protection declaration.
